Not So Different
by The Other J-D
Summary: A re-imagining of every episode of the show with Daria's character genderflipped to be a boy.  I know the genderflip's been done before, but as far as I know this is the first fic of any kind to re-imagine all 67 parts.
1. A Friend In Hell Is A Friend Indeed

**Not So Different  
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_**1. A Friend In Hell Is A Friend Indeed**_

_The road to what fresh hell is paved with good intentions? _Taking an immediate dislike to a fresh high school hell, even before they'd actually reached it, had the advantage of saving time. The good intentions, typically trite, flowed from the mouth of Sonny's father. He must have thought he was conducting a dialogue with his children. Sonny treated his father's words like a babbling brook from which he could fish the occasional feed line. There was one now, something about the difficulties of moving to a new town and a new school.

'Have we moved?' _Would the sarcasm register?_

No, the father reacted to his son's feigned obliviousness with the genuine article. Or if his obliviousness was assumed, it was done so thoroughly that it probably made no difference.

Quinn, unlike Sonny, wasn't listening to their father at all. She just turned the car radio up. Sonny didn't care about that one way or the other, but their father chuntered on, unconsciously turning the radio off. It made no difference to Sonny, he didn't need the radio noise to screen things out, but on a sudden experimental impulse he leaned forward and turned it on again, loud. As his father turned it off again, he did seem temporarily disoriented, but that was his commonest state, so it was hard to draw a definitive causal connection.

Another feed line. 'People will warm up to you if you just give it a little time.'

_That's advice that neither Quinn nor I needs, _Sonny thought privately, as he responded innocently.'I'm sure there'll be people who'll want to make things warm for me. Hot, even.'

Once again, his father didn't get it, or didn't want to. Sonny, on the other hand, had no difficulty summing things up. On this journey he had, to keep in practice, completed a review of his self-inventory, the package that was being delivered to his new high school in Lawndale: physically unimpressive both natively and in presentation; no talent for sport and no opinion of it; no compunction about demonstrating that he was the smartest person in the room; fond of sarcastic wisecracks; contemptuous of the high-school popularity racket and indifferent at best to all group activity. As for the reception such a package could expect at any school, Sonny had an extensive database of records, but no doubt Lawndale High would have some novel unpleasantnesses for the researcher attentive to detail. He was in no hurry to find out.

Quinn, on the other hand, couldn't wait for the reception any school would hand out to somebody like her. She was first out of the car to accept the first round of homage from her new audience. Sonny paused to promise his father that he'd give her all the big-brotherly support she'd need before he slid out of the car. Another irony Jake Morgendorffer, Senior, wouldn't figure out. Instead, with Quinn out of earshot, he mumbled hastily, 'Listen, Sonny, on your first day, try not to … well, you know …'

'Yes, Dad, I do know, you know.' Of course he _knew_, there was no reassurance in that, but it should satisfy his father long enough for him to make his getaway. And once out of the car, it seemed that Quinn's penumbra would at least shroud the visuals of the first collision between Sonny and Lawndale High. _You know _would come round soon enough: he wasn't going to shape his life around avoiding it, but he wasn't exactly going to hurry towards it.

For Quinn, a new high school meant something different. Of course she'd hurry towards it.

* * *

><p>Naturally, if you made the right kind of entrance, you could draw the attention of the fashionable and the popular right away, and that could be so important to your own popularity. Boys were starting to ask Quinn for dates already. Of course decisions about that could wait, and should wait. You couldn't choose a boyfriend right away. That would be like eating the first pancake off the stove. You had to give one to the dog. Boys would come and go, she'd date them and she'd break up with them. The first thing to do was figure out the girls she'd be dealing with, because she'd have to keep dealing with them. She picked up on at least one of them noticing Sonny sneaking past, hoping that nobody would pay any attention to him because they were all interested in Quinn. All she saw on the girl's face, though, was a quick summing-up: <em>male, unpopular type, of no further interest<em>. That would be what Sonny wanted, but Quinn was glad she'd picked out already at least one ally or rival who knew a thing or two. She, Quinn, already knew that she would have to be careful not to have people connecting her with Sonny. Why would they, though?

They did both have to go on the principal's tour of the school for new students. Quinn hoped they wouldn't be the only two.

* * *

><p>Sonny noticed that Quinn was careful to show up for the new students' tour independently, preferring that they be just two separate parts of a random assortment of six or eight. After the predictable school spirit hype, the principal explained that they were each going to have an interview with the school psychologist, to ensure that they were like little ships properly fitted out for their high school voyage. Oh good, another feed line.<p>

'Shouldn't you distribute charts showing the reefs and shoals and the markers of past wrecks?' The principal ignored him, but other members of the group edged away. 'I see some of you have already marked me down as one of them. Maybe there is intelligent life at high school after all.' Sonny noticed with satisfaction the face Quinn pulled. And the principal had noticed, too, even if she wasn't giving anything away: she directed Sonny to the psychologist first.

Like everybody else, psychologists are sometimes good at their job and sometimes not. It didn't take long into the interview for Sonny to decide that this would be an instance of 'not'. For one thing, she wanted to know whether 'Sonny' was what his friends called him. Did he look like the kind of person who had friends?

Next she asked him about a photograph she held up. 'I don't know those people', he said. They were a conventionally attractive teenage couple. 'They don't look like they're going to be my friends.'

The psychologist shook her head. 'You're not going to meet these people. I just want you to make up a story about what they're discussing.'

'Hm.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'They could be talking about the new students who've just started at their school. They could be wondering which one's going to get up on the roof with a sniper rifle and start shooting people at random.'

The psychologist blanched satisfactorily.

* * *

><p>Passing Quinn on his way out of the room, Sonny said to her, because he knew she wouldn't like it, 'I hope you're not too worried about the test.' He savoured her protesting response until it was displaced from his mind in his first class.<p>

One of the teacher's eyes throbbed with the most peculiar tic Sonny had ever seen. It looked as if it might burst out of the socket at any moment. That might get on _Sick, Sad World_! Imagining the television reporter interviewing him, Sonny started studying the teacher. He was obviously not a happy man the same way the Sahara is not wet. As soon as he'd got Sonny to introduce himself to the class, he began probing him, asking him a question about the doctrine of 'Manifest Destiny'.

_Looking for targets, obviously. But what kind? Oh well, there's no real question about what the answer _should _be._

'Manifest Destiny was the doctrine that Americans are better than everybody else, and so they should take other people's land away from them to prove it.'

Although the history teacher (along with some of the other students, Sonny sensed grimly) plainly didn't like the answer, he didn't say it was wrong, which was interesting. So it wasn't stupidity which was making his life so unhappy, or at least not his own. It might be intelligence, though, and other people's stupidity, judging by his next choices of targets. The first, addressed by the teacher as Kevin, had to be a 'star' of the football team, given the teacher's reference to his potential to win the Heisman trophy (the teacher sounded aggrieved about the prospect). The second, addressed by the teacher as Brittany, mentioned, at a distressingly high pitch, that she was dating Kevin. Both of them sounded as if they had never learned a thing in class and were never going to. The teacher's tic intensified and he began threatening the class with double homework and a quiz if nobody volunteered to answer his question. Sonny felt a wave of unhappiness through the room. He sighed and raised his hand, but the teacher only berated him for showing off. Once again, students as well as the teacher were unhappy.

_Damned if I do and damned if I don't. So what else is new? At least I know what to expect for the rest of the day—the rest of the year—the rest of high school._

* * *

><p>Before he got home from school, events had confirmed for Sonny that his accustomed niche was available to him at his new school. Over dinner with the family, he learned that Quinn had found a carefully selected niche, too.<p>

'There's a Fashion _Club_?' Sonny's shock was only feigned. 'Good to see how the school has figured its priorities.'

Sonny's parents hastily turned the conversation to his first day's experiences.

'The principal's a hype-artist, the school psychologist's a quack, and so far I know all the answers to the teachers' questions …'

'That's great!' said his father.

'… so nobody's happy with me.'

Sonny's mother sighed.

'Oh, Sonny, how many times have we talked about this!' She shook her head. 'You have to give people a chance!'

'I gave the students in my history class a chance to appreciate historical truth. One super-patriot took the chance to demonstrate how much he didn't like it. No bones broken, though.'

Sonny's mother gripped the edge of the table. 'Don't tell me you got into a fight on your first day! You know how much we hoped that moving here would give you a chance to break out of that pattern.'

'And you know that I don't "get into fights". I get beaten up. And I know the pattern inside out. Do you want me to show you the graphs _again_?'

The phone rang and his mother swerved to answer it. 'Hello … Helen Morgendorffer speaking … Yes, Sonny Morgendorffer … _Yes_, Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior, that's the one, we call him "Sonny" … I think these things often involve some sort of misunderstanding … I'm afraid I'm very busy at the moment … What? … _What?_ … Oh, but surely … Oh, _I see_ … Well, I wouldn't have any objection to that … So long as it's clearly understood that there'll be no record made of what are really unsubstantiated speculations … Thank you … And you'll confirm that in writing? … Thank you … Goodbye.'

Sonny had heard his mother's lawyerly side coming out during the phone conversation, but just because she was defending him to outsiders he didn't expect that she'd automatically take the same supportive attitude within the four walls of the family home. Whatever they'd called to talk to his parent about, something was up, and that meant probably something bad.

When she'd hung up, she said, 'Did you talk to a psychologist at school today?'

'They said we wouldn't be graded on that test!' Quinn burst out.

Sonny's mother looked at him, disregarding Quinn. 'Did you say something to the psychologist about shooting people?'

'I just got finished telling you that she's a quack', Sonny said, keeping any hint of irritation out of his voice.

'Yeah', said Sonny's father, 'I heard that!'

Sonny's mother sighed. 'Well, whatever you said, at least this school is paying attention and trying to do something. They want you to take a special after-school class to boost your self-esteem. I agreed. It might help.'

'You're not really going to shoot up the school, are you?' Quinn gave a nervous giggle. 'If my freak brother did anything like that, it could really hurt my popularity with my new friends.'

Sonny didn't know what Quinn was making such a fuss about. She always told people that he was her cousin or something, anyway. He answered her question by saying, 'Don't worry, nobody will blame you. After the SWAT team's taken me out, it'll turn out that it was just one of those hilarious sitcom misunderstandings.'

* * *

><p>Jane Lane picked out the spot behind the new student with the smart mouth whom she had first noticed in her US History class, Sonny Morgendorffer. O'Neill hadn't seen her in that seat before, which would make it easier for him to forget yet again that she'd been through the course before, and there was something intriguing about the new student's look. He wore a figure-concealing outfit in muddy colours, almost aggressively non-descript. Now that she was seated behind him she saw that from the rear, with his unusually fine silky hair—was it auburn or chestnut?—he could easily be mistaken for a girl. He was certainly short and slight enough to pass: he was Jane's own height at the absolute most, without her runner's lankiness, and Jane wasn't tall compared to the other girls in the tenth grade, let alone the boys. He could be interesting to sketch. She could interpret his bulky coat and unisex boots as a suit of armour, with his big-framed glasses as the helmet visor. She wondered what he was doing in the self-esteem class—he'd had no trouble speaking up to DeMartino in history. He seemed to be sketching something himself, or doodling, and she craned forward to get a better look. Ah! He already had O'Neill pegged, judging by the picture of him with a piece of stinky cheese for the head. But then, why was he also taking notes? And why was he raising his hand to ask O'Neill a question? She had him figured for the cluey intellectual type. He should know that this self-esteem nonsense wasn't a real class, and that when O'Neill talked about 'realising your actuality' it had no meaning.<p>

Jane decided to use this opportunity to make contact and leant forward again. As she did so she noticed that he gave the shadow of a flinch, as if he'd sensed her intrusion on his space and been disturbed by it. She realised that he'd done the same thing the first time she looked over his shoulder. She made a mental note of the visually interesting effect as she delivered her message to him.

'He doesn't know what it means. He's got the speech memorised. Relax and go with the flow.'

'How can I do that if it doesn't make any sense?' he said in a voice outstandingly lacking in tonal cues.

Jane could see that the whispering was making O'Neill skittish; well, more skittish. 'Let me fill you in later. I've taken this course six times.'

Jane was able to make good on her offer as they walked home together. Both on the same route. Handy.

'… and then the next class after that is for "gender-specific issues", so they segregate us.'

Sonny nodded. 'And I guess they talk to you about "body image" and that kind of thing. Maybe eating disorders as well.'

'After six repetitions I could give you a near-verbatim report if you wanted one. Obviously I can't do that for the other room …'

'… but it's not hard to guess the kind of thing. Actually, it wouldn't be a bad idea to talk to the boys about body image and eating disorders as well. Those things are turning out not to be quite as gender-specific as some people used to think. But I'm guessing this school isn't quite that progressive.'

'So you've met Ms Li', said Jane. 'The principal, I mean.'

'Yes, and the quack psychologist too. Never mind that for a moment. If you've memorised the whole course, why don't you just pass the test and get out?'

'I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special.'

Their sidelong glances met and they walked on in a companionable silence.

* * *

><p>The very next day after first meeting, Jane and Sonny had fallen into the habit of walking between classes together when they had the same ones. Jane noticed again, as she had in self-esteem class and walking home together, his subtle sensitivity to some kinds of intrusion on his visual field.<p>

While Sonny might have the characteristics that drew the eye of an artist, Jane knew it was somebody else that most of the rest of the school was looking at, even if this other new student was only in the ninth grade. Within the general prescriptions of popular people's fashion she did show some potential flair for a style of her own, and her striking bouncy shiny long red hair, like everything else about her appearance, was obviously a combination of natural luck and careful grooming. That same first day together Jane and Sonny walked by as the girl was leaning against a locker talking with some unfortunate male she'd hooked and was reeling in to be gaffed, describing as she did so the expensive favours she liked boys to do for her. Jane pointed this out to Sonny, and he said that the girl was his sister. His voice didn't give much away, but Jane didn't think he sounded like a big brother sticking up for his little sister. He sounded like another kind of big brother. She felt sorry for him, but didn't want to say too much.

'Oh. Bummer.'

Just at that moment, the boy was asking Sonny's sister whether she had any brothers or sisters, and she was telling him that she was an only child. Jane would have expected Sonny to show some response. The change on his face was detectable only to the close observer.

* * *

><p>At the second afternoon self-esteem class, Sonny took the seat next to Jane Lane and they collaborated on a drawing which they handed back and forth. This time Mr O'Neill was transmogrified into an ice cream and attacked by wild animals. The only interruption was when Sonny had to answer a challenge from O'Neill to think of a daydream he could make come true when he went home. Sonny suggested (to O'Neill's approval) getting his whole family to do something together, then added 'something they'd really hate'. O'Neill twitched beautifully. Jane congratulated Sonny.<p>

Walking home together again, Sonny said to Jane, 'I'm not collaborating with you on any more art. I can pass my art classes well enough, but I know when I'm out of my league.'

'Is that your low self-esteem speaking, or is this a sneaky attempt to raise my self-esteem?'

'It shows what low esteem you hold me in that you should even canvass the possibility. I'm hoping you'll collaborate with me on something else. Do you still have all the answers to the self-esteem graduation test? I have to get out of the class.'

'Is O'Neill lowering your self-esteem to his own level?' Jane wisecracked.

'I can cope with people trying to beat down my self-esteem. With a sister like Quinn I'm used to that. The problem is that when I got home from the first class, my father had taken the afternoon off to see whether there was any contribution he could make to remedying my "condition". And his idea of a fun afternoon of father-son bonding was to take me to the park and throw a football around.'

Jane made a gesture of amusement. 'And this is a man who's known you all your life?'

'I tried to tell him that amateur meddling was a bad idea while I'm in the care of experts …'

Jane was even more amused. 'And yet your nose has grown no longer.'

'If my mother isn't satisfied with my father's performance—and when is she ever?—she might take over herself. For parent-teacher conferences she generally gets her office assistant to substitute for her at the last minute, but this time I don't think I can rely on that. No, there's only one thing for it—graduating from the self-esteem class. So, will you be my collaborator?'

'You want me to help you corrupt the process?'

Sonny gave a curt nod.

'What's my inducement?' asked Jane.

'The quiet satisfaction of a job well done.'

'You certainly know how to tempt a girl …'

Sonny let himself dangle.

'… I'll offer you a deal', Jane went on. 'One of the things about self-esteem class is that sometimes things in it, like some of the students, inspire my artworks—and I don't just mean cartoons of O'Neill. If I graduated from it I'd be cut off from that. But on the other hand, if we both graduate, I could use my afternoons to do sketches of you. That's my price. You sit for your portrait.'

'You drive a hard bargain.' Sonny's face and voice were as flat as ever, giving nothing away.

'And …?'

'And what? That's it, you drive a hard bargain. Don't let it boost your self-esteem too much.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Now I have to hurry to complete O'Neill's homework assignment, because once I've graduated from the class I won't have that excuse to use against my family any more, and I'm looking forward to the expressions on their faces.'

'I like the way you think.'

'There's a kids' restaurant where staff dressed in animal costumes get you to sing along with them. We used to go there when Quinn was younger. Then she liked it, but now?'

Jane raised an eyebrow. 'Sounds like a scene I'd want to paint.'

'Why don't I get them to invite you? I can tell them your friendship is important to my self-esteem.'

'Okay, but this doesn't get you off the hook for sitting for your portrait. The only thing is, I have to be home from dinner in time to watch _Sick, Sad World_.'

Sonny nodded. 'I never miss it.'

'We could watch it together and I could give you the answers to the test at the same time.'

'That sounds like an efficient arrangement.'

* * *

><p>'I wish I'd seen this before', Sonny said.<p>

'I thought you said you never missed _Sick, Sad World_? Or are you talking about my room?'

'I never miss the show, but I haven't seen them covering UFO conventions before. "Once the domain of kooks, but now big business." What you call a false contrast.'

'You enjoy those?'

'Well, yes, but mostly I was thinking about the expressions on my family's faces if they were forced to go to one', said Sonny. 'That would be even better than the expressions on their faces when we were singing along to _Row, Row, Row Your Boat _at the restaurant. By the way, thanks for backing my play.'

Jane shrugged. 'Well, I figured I owed you one in exchange for the invitation. Your family's expressions were more than worth the price of admission. Your sister wanted the earth to open and swallow her.'

'Exactly. Now imagine if I'd got them to take us on a family outing to a UFO convention as my necessary self-esteem booster. I'll lose that excuse once I've graduated from the course.'

'Pity. I'm getting all sorts of ideas about painting your family.'

'Maybe it could still work.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Will you back another play for me? If we graduate from self-esteem class, I could suggest an outing as a celebration, hint that if we don't my self-esteem might wobble, and insist on a UFO convention because my new friend Jane loves them so much.'

'You know, there is a family connection between you and your sister.'

Sonny's expression and voice flattened further, if possible. 'I hate you.'

'Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em', said Jane. 'Looks to me like you and Quinn picked up the same manipulation skills. But relax. Now you've got me on your side. So let's ace that test and then next stop the UFO convention.'

* * *

><p>'I'm not going to wake up suddenly, am I', Sonny whispered to Jane.<p>

'I'm afraid I can't tell you that it's one of my nightmares. No pink taffeta.'

They were seated on the stage at the school assembly as Ms Li announced the success of the latest school fund-raiser.

'And I'm sure the money that was stolen from the office will be recovered', Jane whispered to Sonny.

'As soon as the school nurse collects the DNA samples.'

'And to think you've only known Ms Li for a week.'

Now Mr O'Neill was at the microphone making his announcement. '… two students who have completed our after-school self-esteem course faster than anybody ever before! Please join me in congratulations as I present these certificates of self-esteem to Sonny Morgendorffer and Jane Lane.'

Seven people clapped. _Look, Dad, people are warming up to me. And there's Mr Super-Patriot from history whispering something to a friend, and his friend's scowling. Yes, it's going to be warm for me all right._ Sonny gave a gentle rub to a tender spot on his side.

Jane shrugged, and whispered out of the corner of her mouth to Sonny: 'I wish you had brought that sniper rifle to school. You could give me covering fire. Oh well, I'm going in.' Then she stepped to the podium as the clapping died and began telling the audience about how proud she was, knowing that she had self-esteem, which gave her even more self-esteem. Her eyes and the corner of her mouth flicked for a bare instant towards Sonny before she started to ham it up, provoking chuckles from the audience.

'… but having all of you know that I had low self-esteem makes me feel kind of bad … like a big failure or something.'

Knowing that nobody was looking at him, Sonny pursed his lips in approval as Jane sobbed and buried her face in her arms, making a muffled plea to go home, and then bolted from the stage, with the audience bursting into laughter as O'Neill pursued her, calling, 'Sunny! Wait!'

Sonny's expression was blank again as he stepped solemnly to the podium. 'To battle the terrible problem of low self-esteem I have learnt to realise my actuality. I have learnt that nobody else is like me, and that me is who I am. But the more of these lessons I was taught in class, the more I realised that the perfect example had been in front of me all along. What helped me above all to conquer low self-esteem was a person who stands proudly and proclaims "I am" better than anybody I know, my very own sister Quinn Morgendorffer. Stand up, sis, and accept my thanks.'

Sonny could see the boys next to Quinn switching from preening for her approval to cross-examination about this unexpected revelation. Quinn cringed. _She'll be an only child again before she knows it. She doesn't realise that almost nobody was listening and most of the few who were will forget almost immediately. At least she's hating it now._

Sonny's public thanking of Quinn got him one additional reward on top of Quinn's displeasure, by playing into the plan he'd already made. His parents were pleased to hear the story, and Sonny's mother thought that _they _should thank him, for his 'achievement' in 'graduating' early from self-esteem 'school'. That gave Sonny the opening he was looking for.

'Now that you mention it, there is something …'

* * *

><p>In the Morgendorffers' car, on the way to the convention, Jane pretended to be making conversation. 'You know, Mr and Mrs Morgendorffer, I've never met anybody called "Sonny" before.'<p>

'He's actually named after his father. They're Jacob Morgendorffer, Senior, and Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior. We think "Sonny" sounds nicer than "Junior".'

Sonny said, 'My self-esteem teacher thought that being named as an extension of my father and then dubbed with a childish nickname could have been one source of my problems.'

'Oh no! Did he really say that?' Sonny's father's head reflexively swivelled towards Sonny and the car swerved wildly.

'Watch the road, Jake!' said Sonny's mother.

'No, Dad, he didn't really say that.' Sonny's tone still gave nothing away.

His father laughed. 'Isn't my son great! He's the greatest.'

Jane decided to lay it on with a trowel. 'Oh, Mr Morgendorffer, you and Mrs Morgendorffer are the greatest, the way you support his self-esteem. And taking me with you to the UFO convention, too. I'm so looking forward to it. Especially when we get a group photograph taken with the cardboard alien.'

Sonny's mother and sister both winced. Quinn opened her mouth, but her mother signalled her to be silent.

Unperceived, Jane winked at Sonny. Sonny winked back.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Esteemsters' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	2. Candour

**Not So Different**

_**2. Candour**_

'You're following me again, Sonny.' Quinn gritted her teeth. 'I really wish you'd stop following me every day.'

Sonny almost smiled and spoke without inflection. 'Origin point, home. Same. Destination point, school. Same. Shortest route? Same. If you can't follow that, I don't know how you hope to pass mathematics.'

Hostilities were unexpectedly suspended on the arrival of the three most persistent of the male devotees Quinn had already acquired. Like something in a cartoon, they had colour-coded hair, black, blonde, and reddish (but not Quinn's shade), and Quinn sometimes seemed to have trouble keeping their names straight, although Sonny was fairly sure they all started with 'J'. They all wanted to carry something for Quinn, like books or pencils, and to maintain an even-handed inclusion of the third she had to produce a hair scrunchie from her pocket as an extra burden. Sonny left their Brownian motion behind him with a parting warning about scrunchie injuries. Behind him he could hear one of them asking Quinn 'Is that your brother?' Quinn told him not to pry.

* * *

><p>In art class, Sonny was seated with Brittany Taylor, the bubble-headed pigtailed blonde he'd noticed infuriating the teacher in his first class at Lawndale, and she was struggling with the concept of perspective. Influenced by the environment and by the habits of his new friend Jane Lane, he tried looking at her with an artist's eye. No, he was coming up empty. <em>What was the description in that novel? 'Thin, pretty, big tits: your basic nightmare?' Hadn't said 'bubble-headed', but that would probably be another feature of that particular nightmare. Or 'cheerleader' could be. Anyway, I can't see the artistic interest. Maybe I could discuss it with Jane. Or maybe not.<em>

The art teacher, Ms Defoe, approached, and praised Sonny's work. 'You've really created the illusion of depth.'

'I'm thinking of going into politics.'

Brittany needed new paper and pencil. She really was applying herself, but it wasn't getting her anywhere. When Ms Defoe moved on, Brittany fretted aloud about being forced into remedial art classes. 'I heard they make all the lefties become righties.'

Sonny made a strangulated noise and (right-handed) Brittany looked up directly at him. He wasn't going to share the joke with her in full—if it was any kind of joke—but he had to say something. If he made it cryptic enough she wouldn't get it.

'I'm sorry. I couldn't help thinking about a different kind of lefty and righty.' He concentrated on keeping his gaze fixed on the line of her eyebrows and not letting it drift a fraction further down for an instant. It seemed to be working, though one couldn't always tell.

'Sonny, you're a brain. Can you teach me this perspective stuff?'

_What's in it for me? _'I don't think it's a good idea for me to talk much with you.'

'But why not?' said Brittany, her voice rising even higher.

'You're the head cheerleader, right? And your boyfriend's the quarterback, right? He might not like my being around you. In any way, even if it's just for help with schoolwork.'

'Oh! Are you worried about Kevin? It's okay. I can talk to him about you. It's not like you're a popular person.'

Sonny returned to his own work, but Brittany persisted.

'If you help me out, you could come to my party on Saturday night, even though you're not popular.'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. _I'm not going to talk her out of this idea. So what do I want? Run the risk of being beaten up for nosing around his girlfriend, or run the risk of being beaten up for refusing to help his girlfriend? Given that there's nothing at stake here that matters to me …_ He cleared his throat.

'I tell you what, Brittany. I'll help you on two conditions. One, you say nothing of any kind to Kevin about me. Two, this is the only time ever.'

'But what if I have more problems with art later?'

'You'll have to find somebody else to help you. There are people who are just as good at art as I am, or even better.' Sonny tilted his head to one side. 'In fact, if you agree to this deal, I'll talk to a friend of mine who's an actual artist. She might be prepared to help you if you need it.' _I only said 'might'. It is _theoretically_ possible._

'Hey, if your friend is going to help me with my art, why don't you invite her to my party too? Like a date for you! That would really work out, because then nobody will think I'm interested in you, and you won't make any trouble!'

Sonny felt _special_.

* * *

><p>Sonny was in Jane's room, making good on his commitment to let her make some sketches for a portrait of him. As Jane worked, he glanced at one of her other sketchbooks and complimented her on her skill at life drawing. Thin, pretty, big tits—one of the models reminded him of Brittany.<p>

'Don't hate me, but I told somebody I'd ask you this, so I have to. Have you ever considered doing some tutoring to help another art student? I can tell you up front that there's nothing in it for you, unless you count the opportunity to turn down an invitation to Brittany Taylor's party on Saturday.'

Jane tilted her head towards Sonny. 'So I can stay home and listen to my brother practise instead of having the opportunity for some new ideas for sketches?'

'I suppose there could be some people striking poses. Look, if you actually want to go, all you have to do is agree to help her the next time she has problems in art class.' Sonny explained the history of his negotiations with Brittany.

'So, in a way', Jane said, 'I'd be doing you a favour, getting you out of any future appeals for help.'

'You might look at it that way, but remember you've already been recompensed with the party invitation you inexplicably want so desperately.'

'I hate you. The part _I_ don't get is why you were so worried about what Kevin might do. He seems harmless enough to me. Unless you actually are warm for Brittany's form …'

'Please! Haven't I just arranged to push her off on you? And do I ever radiate any kind of warmth for anybody or anything? The point isn't what I'm doing but what Kevin Thompson might like to pretend he imagines I'm doing. And I'm not _worried_. Whatever happens will happen and I'll deal with it. I'm just cognisant of the scientific evidence.'

Jane narrowed her eyes at Sonny. 'There are things you're not telling me.'

'Correct. Look, talk to Brittany at school tomorrow and tell her you're available to help her with her art class problems if she'll put you on the guest list for the party.'

'And are you going to accept your invitation?'

'Yes, right after I join Junior ROTC.'

* * *

><p>At home, Sonny chanced on Quinn looking at clothes in front of an arrangement of three mirrors.<p>

'Multiple Quinns. Who told you about my nightmares?'

'Please, you're distracting me from choosing the perfect outfit for Brittany's party on Saturday night.'

Sonny kept his voice neutral. 'Sorry. I'm sure it's a very special party.'

'Yes. So go away.'

'So … there'd be no sane reason to decline an invitation.'

'_No. Now g—_'

Sonny cut in. 'I'm very grateful to you for your _advice _about how _I _should handle this social situation.'

When Quinn realised that Sonny meant _he _had an invitation, her reaction was everything he could have hoped for, as he explained later to Jane. 'She even tried to discredit me with our parents by telling them about how I charged her for doing her homework, before she thought better of it. It would have been hopeless for her no matter what she said. She was never going to get them to stop me from going to a party. They like the idea of my making more friends. Quinn knows that's irrelevant, because I won't make any friends at a party, but she's never going to be able to convince my parents of that, because they don't _want _to believe it. That's what makes it so frustrating for her.'

'So you're ready to sign up for Junior ROTC?'

Sonny cocked his head. 'Well, my mother _has _asked me to keep an eye on Quinn at the party.'

'That's harsh.'

'Especially when I don't even know what she's punishing me for.'

Jane smirked. 'Maybe you're being punished for interpreting this as parental licence to spoil Quinn's evening?'

'I hate you.'

'Will that prevent you from accepting the ride to the party that my big brother's offering?'

Sonny held out an open palm. 'It seems only fair to warn you about the possibility that if we turn up together people may make the mistake of thinking you're dating me.'

'I'm already unpopular. I'll take the risk.'

* * *

><p>Sonny and Jane got out of Trent Lane's car at the gatehouse for Crewe Neck.<p>

'Don't do anything I wouldn't', Trent said before driving away.

'What wouldn't your brother do? I hardly know anything about him', said Sonny.

'And you're not likely to find out much if you won't talk with him. It wouldn't hurt you.'

'I'm not his little sister. From his point of view, I'm currently "that guy who's nosing around my little sister".'

'I'm sure that's not how Trent thinks of you. I explained to him that you don't date.'

Sonny said nothing.

Jane raised an eyebrow. 'This is weird. First there was that stuff about how Kevin might react to your being around Brittany, and now there's this stuff about how Trent might react to your being around me. Trent's not like Kevin, I'm not like Brittany, the two situations are completely different, but you're reacting in the same way, and it makes no sense in either case. What's it all about?'

'All right.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'I'll give you the information. But later. After the party. I mean, it seemed like you really wanted to party. And I want to track down Quinn. Okay?'

Jane shrugged. 'I guess so. Is Quinn all you're here for?'

'I guess there's always the chance of free snacks.'

The gate security guard asked their names.

'Jane Lane.'

'Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior, but everybody calls me Sonny.'

He checked them off on his clipboard and they walked to the Taylors' door, where Brittany greeted them. 'Sonny, it's great you came! It means we're even now for art class, and you can be with Jane at the party so the other cheerleaders won't get any more mad with me.'

Jane asked for an explanation as Sonny scanned the environment.

Brittany said, 'I promised the other cheerleaders I wouldn't invite any more really attractive girls, and they're mad at me because Sonny's sister's here. But you two aren't popular like her anyway.'

'You really know how to make your guests feel welcome, Brittany', said Jane.

Brittany smiled automatically and moved off. Jane whispered to Sonny, 'She makes me feel almost as special as when I had low self-esteem. Have you spotted Quinn?'

'Not yet. I guess we might as well start at the snack table.'

* * *

><p>After she found out that her weird brother would be coming to the party, Quinn arranged to arrive as early as she could without being unfashionable, in the hope of avoiding him as much as possible. Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie were fetching her drinks and snacks, and taking with utter seriousness every objection she made to the details of size, shape and composition, going to ridiculous lengths to remedy them (twisting pretzels by hand, for example). The only slightly tiresome part was the embarrassing stories they were telling to make each other look bad.<p>

And now her brother had arrived, weirdly accompanied by his strange new friend Jane Lane as well. He hadn't spotted Quinn yet, though.

This would be the worst occasion to be seen with Sonny. She'd already noticed a small group of well-connected girls working out in detail the recent, current, and potential popularity of everybody in the room. If Sonny came up to her, they'd see, and she'd look bad. That would be just like him. Unless he was more interested in Jane's company, but Quinn wasn't prepared to rely on that chance. Jane might not have figured it out yet, but Quinn knew that Sonny didn't date.

At least there were furniture-sized ornaments to hide behind.

* * *

><p>At the snack table, Sonny and Jane discovered two kinds of chips. 'You're so excited', lied Jane. 'You choose.'<p>

'Chuck Ruttheimer here', said a confident voice, in a poor attempt to sound enticing. 'And you are?'

'Jane.'

Sonny averted his gaze and lifted his voice to a higher register. 'Gerry', he warbled.

'I'll be your social director for the evening. Would you ladies like a tour of the house? It's free.'

Sonny shifted to look at the boy head-on, trying to get the most visibility in the dim lighting, and let his voice drop back to his accustomed monotone. 'Can I give you a tip?'

'Chuck' Ruttheimer's flinch was the barest imaginable. 'Oh! … ahh … I hope you will both accept my apologies for my indefensible error.'

'If you mean your hairstyle', said Sonny, 'then you don't need my tip after all. I was going to tell you to get it cut.'

'I shall leave you to your own affairs. Again, please forgive the intrusion.'

Sonny had to give the creep credit for smoothness. 'I thought you were our social director for the evening? I've got nothing better to do than your tour. Jane?' Jane shrugged, then nodded.

More credit was earned when the tour guide act turned out to be a good one. It wasn't hard to see that the house and decorations were hideously kitsch, but the Ruttheimer creep had an excellent critical eye for the specific architectural abominations committed.

The tour ended at a door beneath the staircase—according to their guide, a laundry room now in use as the 'make-out room'. He knocked and called out to whomever was inside not to lean on the buttons.

From inside came a male voice saying, 'Lay off, Upchuck, or I'll break your face!' and a female giggle. _Upchuck? That'd be right._

'Upchuck' announced the end of the tour and thanked them for their attention. When he asked for questions, Sonny wanted to know how Upchuck got invited.

Upchuck made no attempt to dissemble, evade the question, or pretend to misunderstand. 'I dissected her frog.'

Honour of a peculiar sort satisfied, Upchuck moved off, presumably returning to the prowl.

Jane glanced over her shoulder, noticed two boys staring at them, and whispered to Sonny. Sonny didn't like the idea of two boys staring at them, but all he said was, 'Don't they know we're from two different worlds? Regular and popular?'

'The one in the green shirt is cute … in a head-too-big-for-his-body kind of way.'

'I wouldn't want to cramp your style … again. I'll take another look round for Quinn and leave you to it. Them. Whatever.' Sonny moved off as the two boys approached Jane.

* * *

><p>Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie had found Quinn in her hiding place, but things were all right so long as Sonny and his friend Jane were trailing around behind a weird-looking creepy freckled redheaded boy (one of the girls talking about popularity said the three of them must be at the party on some sort of exchange program). When that was over, though, Sonny started heading towards her, and she decided to take temporary refuge in the bathroom. She had some difficulty shaking off her three dates. <em>How dense were they? She was going to the <em>bathroom_!_ Before she could get herself safely locked behind the door, Sonny had reached them and addressed her as 'Sis', and she asked him why he didn't go somewhere where he might fit in—'if there is such a place'. _Brr! What was Sonny even doing at a party? He didn't _like_ people!_

* * *

><p>Sonny figured that if Jane wanted some fun with her big-headed admirer then he could have some fun at Quinn's expense. She might have been avoiding him but he managed to track her down, surrounded by the three boys from her grade with the graded hair colours. She tried to spoil his fun by fleeing to the bathroom, so he introduced himself to the three boys as 'Quinn's brainy brother' and then amused himself by telling embarrassing family stories about her. He had finished the one about her being forced to urinate in a paper cup during a long family car trip, and was starting on the one about Quinn's 'chubby phase' (with a promise of photos) when Quinn reappeared and offered him irresistible cash to desist. He moved off to an observation post, back against the wall for greater security and affording a good field of vision. As partygoers danced to the music around him, he experimented with repeating the lyrics of the songs with the rhythms unsprung. Some bizarre effects were possible if the words were pronounced with just the right absence of intonation. Scanning the room he saw the Quinn Morgendorffer Admiration Society reconvened outside the laundry room. Without observing them noticeably, he could half-overhear enough to guess that the three were now competing to see who could provide the most support to Quinn in rejecting the family she had so dazzlingly transcended.<p>

Then the door to the laundry room cracked open and Jane's head craned out. Sonny shifted his gaze discreetly in another direction, but in a moment Jane joined him.

'What happened to "Bobby Bighead"?' he asked her.

'I wasn't really interested.'

Sonny peeled a sock from Jane's shoulder and held it in front of her face before stuffing it into one of his pockets.

Jane shrugged. 'Ready to go?'

'Before we got here.'

As they walked out the door and towards the gatehouse, Sonny answered Jane's question about whether he'd had a good time.

'On the debit side of the ledger, I met Upchuck, but to be fair he is interesting, the way a skunk is. As against that, lots of other people didn't speak with me, I don't have to help Brittany ever again, I made Quinn wish one of us had never been born—I think that's enough to put the balance in the plus column, even without the bonus sock and the two kinds of chips.'

'Then you won't mind rounding out the evening by giving me the information you were talking about before the party?'

Sonny glanced over his shoulder thoughtfully. 'My mother did insist that I keep an eye on Quinn … I better not go home without her.'

'Fine. We can wait here by the gatehouse for her and you can talk while we wait.'

'Okay. But only until Quinn appears, or until you stop me because I'm giving you too much information.'

'Agreed.'

Sonny pursed his lips, turned his gaze to the horizon and began. 'I've collected a lot of information about the factors which affect the likelihood of somebody being bullied, and particularly being beaten up. I've found that it can be associated with a wide range of pretexts. For example, in some cases somebody might get beaten up for not answering back when somebody spoke to him, or at least that would be the reason given. On the other hand, somebody, maybe even the same person, might get beaten up for the ostensible reason that he did answer back when somebody spoke to him. Also, somebody might get beaten up for giving answers to teachers' questions or for not giving answers to teachers' questions. I've got detailed records of all of this, with charts and graphs, how often I've been beaten up with all the context, and what the reasons were supposed to be. At one time or another, I've been bullied and beaten up for all the supposed reasons I just mentioned and for others. I've often been bullied for not being as interested in girls as people thought I should be, which they took as a sign that I'm homosexual. And I've also been beaten up because people thought I was more interested in a girl than they thought I should be. I've had girls' boyfriends beat me up for that, and I've had protective older brothers beat me up for that. Younger brothers too, sometimes.

'My dataset is fullest and most detailed in relation to my own experience, but I've also got plenty of observations about other people being picked on. Look at "Upchuck" Ruttheimer. In my experience, he's the sort of person who probably did have people following through on threats to break his face when he was younger. I wouldn't say that experience made him the man he is today, he probably would have been slimy anyway, but I'd bet it had something to do with it. He probably got out of being bullied by crawling to the bullies, making himself useful to them as a flunkey. I decided a long time ago I didn't want to let bullies turn me into that sort of person. I've seen people broken by bullying, worse than Upchuck, if you can believe that. It isn't even necessarily about being beaten up. _I've _been beaten up a lot, but I've been bullied other ways too, and seen all kinds of bullying. And with physical violence or without, I've seen it change people.

'And one thing I figured out is one of the _real _reasons bullies do it. It's because it does change people. Let's say, for example, I was being bullied by somebody—let's call him …'

Sonny paused for an instant and glanced sideways at Jane and then away again.

'… Jay. Whatever else is going on, part of the reason Jay is bullying me is because of who I am and because of who he is. And what I tell myself is that no matter how many times Jay beats me up, every time I'm going to wake up the next day and I'll still be Sonny Morgendorffer and _he's _going to wake up the next day and he'll still be Jay. He can beat me up, but he can't change that. And because I know that, I can take it, because waking up Sonny Morgendorffer is always going to be better than waking up Jay. Upchuck might beat me up one day—based on my experience I'd say that he's probably been a bit of a bully himself at times, though most likely he's grown out of that stage by now. All this does tend to taper off past a certain age. I have been beaten up since I got to Lawndale, but on the graph the incidence is still following the same downward curve it was on before. But even if Upchuck does beat me up at some point, I'll still wake up the next day as me, and he'll still wake up the next day as Upchuck, and which do you think is better, waking up as me or waking up as Upchuck?'

Sonny paused for one instant, and Jane opened her mouth, but Sonny cut her off.

'Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question. Waking up as me is better than waking up as Upchuck. Waking up as me is better than waking up as Kevin Thompson the quarterback—who I can also pick as somebody who may or may not wind up giving me a beating some day. Waking up as me is better than waking up as that super-patriot whose name I don't even know who beat me up my first day at Lawndale High because he didn't like what I said in US History class about Manifest Destiny.

'Bullies are not going to break me. They're not going to turn me into a slimy flunkey like Upchuck, or worse; they're not going to turn me into a self-pitying wreck who's always running to somebody for help crying about having been beaten up; and they're not going to turn me into the creepy outcast who cracks one day and starts shooting people at random, or not at random. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some kind of masochist. I'm not interested in deliberately provoking bullies to pick on me just for the sake of it. I'll take reasonable precautions to avoid getting beaten up, so long as that doesn't mean sacrificing who I am. I'm going to go on being Sonny Morgendorffer, even if he is a smarty-pants brainy unpopular loser sissy-boy freak loner that nobody likes. Or maybe almost nobody.

'There, is that enough information? Because I don't see Quinn coming yet. I've got lots of records and charts and graphs, as I mentioned, but I don't have them here with me.'

Jane turned and looked closely at Sonny, and her gaze narrowed. She was silent for a moment and then gave a small nod. 'I guess you've got a lot of information, but one topic I have more information about than you is Trent, and whatever experience you may have had with other big brothers, I can guarantee you that Trent's never going to beat you up.' She paused. 'Too much like hard work.'

Sonny shrugged indifferently and then flashed his eyebrows. 'Okay. Oh look, here comes Quinn. Hey, Quinn, why are you walking like that?'

'Some water leaked out from under the laundry room door and my shoes got wet', she said. 'And they're suede!' She grimaced, but then switched to a wide smile. 'And then Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie got into a big fight over me! It was awful! I told them they were all really special, but I thought we shouldn't go too fast, and that we could just be friends, and then they started blaming each other and saying mean things and then the fight started! I kept telling them to stop, because it was so _horrible_, but they just beat each other up!' Quinn sighed melodramatically. 'Is that what they call a "moronic" ending?'

'I think you mean "ironic" ', said Jane.

'It pains me to say it, but I think I have to go with Quinn on this one', said Sonny.

'Anyway', said Quinn, 'I need to get home. Are you going to call Mom and Dad?'

'That would give them leverage unnecessarily. We can walk.'

'I told you my shoes are wet!'

Just then a car drove up. Quinn turned towards it as Upchuck leaned out of the window and offered his services to 'the ladies' as 'a knight in shining armour'.

Sonny wondered whether they could take the armour and ditch the knight.

This time Upchuck didn't flinch at all when he recognised Sonny, although his grin dimmed slightly. 'It's a package deal.'

'Well', said Sonny, 'you have to take me with the ladies. That's a package deal, too.'

Quinn, Jane, and Sonny all got into the car and Upchuck drove off, embarking on another version of his 'tour guide' act, pointing out the 'sights' of Lawndale. Sonny suggested that he put a sock in it (pulling same from his pocket), but Upchuck appeared undeterred. Jane leaned towards Sonny and whispered 'Still Sonny Morgendorffer, huh?' and when Sonny nodded slightly, Jane returned the gesture and whispered, 'And still Jane Lane'.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'The Invitation' by Anne D. Bernstein<strong>_


	3. Future So Dark, Got To Wear Shades

**Not So Different**

_**3. Future So Dark, Got To Wear Shades**_

'Only a high-school sophomore and already thrown out of college?'

'Yes, there's nothing to look forward to now except being declared _persona non grata _by a tyrannical dictatorship.'

Jane and Sonny were sharing a pizza, having discovered a shared enthusiasm for them since their first outing together with Sonny's family.

'Can I bask in your reflected glory?' Jane continued.

'Only if it doesn't bother you that the glory is actually reflected from Quinn. She was the one who let the frat boys choose her as their Keg Queen without mentioning that she was under-age. But she's happy for the credit for our expulsion to go to me.'

'Is there no end to that girl's selflessness? Maybe you should tell me the whole story.'

* * *

><p>Sonny and Quinn had been enrolled in a college preparation course at Lawndale High. It had been their parents' idea, not theirs, prompted by the discovery that friends of theirs were already gearing up in preparation for college application time for their three-year-old daughter. Sonny had pointed out that not going to college at all would save the hassle of moving back home again at the end of four years (at this point Jake had swerved the car, only just missing the oncoming traffic), but Helen had insisted on the necessity of getting into a decent school and brooked no argument. The only consolation left to Sonny had been the fact that Quinn would not only share his resentment at the compulsion but be forced to accept the additional unwanted burden of being in a course together with her brother.<p>

Sonny found the course just as fatuous as he had foreseen, but Quinn was excited by the course assignment to visit a college, her excitement cooling when their parents appropriated the experience as a nostalgic trip for the family to their own _alma mater_, Middleton College.

* * *

><p>'The college had one of the students assigned as a tour guide for us, but my parents peeled off to see my father's old dorm room. Unfortunately that was just before the guide pointed out the old bell tower, so I didn't get the chance to tell my parents how it reminded me of Charles Whitman and UT Austin. Then Quinn left us at fraternity-sorority row. So the first thing I learned about college is that the same instincts which guide the popular people at school keep operating even after you move on to higher education and, as Quinn's subsequent nomination as Keg Queen showed, they're still just as effective.'<p>

'Disappointing, huh?'

'Well … not exactly, if you want to be technically precise about it. I was kind of hoping that college would turn out not to be indistinguishable from school, but realistically my expectations weren't that high, so there wasn't much room for actual disappointment. I guess even in my best fantasies about college people are mostly still jerks. Like maybe my professor wants me to transfer straight from my freshman year to teaching graduate classes on the Paris campus, but mainly because he wants to use my dorm room for affairs with beautiful undergraduates? That's a big part of why I didn't see any point in the college prep course in the first place.' Sonny paused briefly and scratched behind his ear. 'Anyway, after Quinn predictably found the secret entrance to another world for popular people only, the tour guide, who didn't like that world any more than I did, was left with just me. So she took me to a dorm room to observe a demonstration of the specifically college-student way of watching _Sick, Sad World_.'

'Wait.' Jane held up a hand. 'Did you say "she"?'

'I hate it when people look gleeful.'

'But it's every high-school boy's fantasy! Alone in a dorm room with a college coed!'

Sonny grimaced. 'You know I don't date. Besides, we weren't alone. Heather's roommates were there too.'

Jane gestured widely with both hands. 'The high-school boy fantasy isn't about _dating _college coeds, and it's even better if there's more than one of them!' She flashed her eyebrows.

'The only person here fantasising is you. The only reason Heather spent any time with me is because she was getting paid for the tour-guide job.'

Jane raised a finger. 'Tour of her _dorm room_. You know what? I bet she did try hitting on you at some point and you didn't realise it.'

'She was just doing her job with the least possible effort.'

'Okay, I respect that.' Jane lifted her slice of pizza to her mouth. 'Does that mean the whole concept of learning about the college experience was a bust from your point of view?'

Sonny rubbed his chin. 'I didn't exactly learn anything new, but I guess I did gather some additional confirmatory evidence for established hypotheses.'

'Go on.'

'I should add that some of my corroboration comes from the reports from other people in the college prep class after their visits to other colleges, so this isn't just about Middleton.'

Jane nodded and swallowed another bite of pizza. 'Go on', she pressed.

'First hypothesis: students aren't much interested in learning. Confirmed.'

'So, no difference from high school there.'

'Second hypothesis: everything revolves around money. I have a suspicion that there were some shocks about that for my parents when they met the Bursar. Then there was the incident after the end of the course where Quinn was "offered" a "place" at a "college" in Florida on the basis of a questionnaire. The scam is that they don't teach you anything, just rent you beachfront real estate.' Sonny cleared his throat. 'I've also found out that, compared to high school, it's probably easier to get paid for doing other students' assignments. I've got a little money out of Quinn now and then for doing her homework, but at college it's a thoroughly organised business—and one in which there's room in the market for a sufficiently enterprising high-school sophomore with the necessary skills. There are people getting paid good money for rubbish in that line of trade.'

Jane said, 'And you're confident now that you can out-compete them.'

'Well, so far as the technical skills go, yes. In fact I've given it a bit of a test run, doing some college work for people for pay, and no complaints. It's the "sufficiently enterprising" part that's the problem. I don't know that I want to put the necessary effort into organising the business.'

'Would human contact be involved?'

Sonny's eyebrows jumped and he nodded. 'Put your finger on it. I figure I could easily get burned out from that, so I've retired from the business so that I'll have the capacity to start relatively fresh when I get to college myself.'

'Did you make much money from your trial run?'

'That brings me to another reason I retired from the business. My mother found out what I was doing and confiscated my earnings. She said it's wrong to facilitate dishonesty for profit.'

'So she's giving up the practice of corporate law?'

'Once again your thoughts parallel mine, and I can advise you from experience that if you want to not be on speaking terms with my mother you should express that view to her.' Sonny grimaced and then snorted before continuing. 'Third hypothesis: self-centredness and corruption are rife in faculty and administration. Confirmed. The shoddy work I saw people paying for wouldn't be circulating if honest standards were being diligently applied. The only possibility that I haven't been able to test there is that they might be a little more conscientious with the most advanced students, the ones who might be heading for graduate school. But then they'd be dealing with their own potential colleagues and competitors, so self-centredness would apply in any case.'

'I can see one hypothesis you're not confirming.'

Sonny lifted his pizza to his mouth. 'Okay, I'll bite.'

'That our college years will be the best of our lives', said Jane.

Sonny grunted assent as he chewed and swallowed. 'I hadn't even finished yet. Judging from what some of the others said at the debrief session after our campus visits, top athletes get special treatment, another point of resemblance to high school. I've already mentioned that the sort of boy who's attracted to somebody like Quinn at high school is still attracted to her at college, and it's also the case that the sort of boy who's attracted to somebody like Brittany Taylor is still attracted to her at college. There is a minor difference in that they seem to have better techniques for disguising themselves, but would you believe Brittany's story that people who had just met her would be interested in hearing her make up poems and, to quote Brittany, in her feelings and thoughts and … "stuff"?'

Jane shook her head.

'It's a safe bet that those people were boys and I think we can guess what "stuff" about Brittany would interest them', Sonny continued.

'No argument from me', Jane said softly.

'Then there's the subject of bullying.'

Jane said nothing.

'I didn't see or hear of any actual instances of bullying at Middleton myself, and nobody else mentioned any from their college visits, unless you count Kevin Thompson's experience, and apparently he was thrilled that his "brothers" left him naked in a field in the middle of the night covered with molasses. The college that happened at would sound like one to avoid, if only Kevin's memory for facts could be counted on for its name, and if it weren't likely that other schools are much the same. And if that sort of thing happens to the Kevins of this world, the odds are that the like and worse happens to people who don't enjoy it so much. If the shape of the graph can be validly extrapolated, the incidence at college will be lower but non-zero, and the feelings I got from my experiences at Middleton, and the general atmosphere, pointed to the same conclusion. Did I mention that the first thing my parents did was visit my father's old room?'

Jane nodded.

'Well, what drew their attention to it was people throwing things out of the window at us: water balloons, books, what-have-you. I count that as more confirmatory evidence. That's the only reason _I _was happy to go to Heather's dorm room: it sounded like the best chance of avoiding "high-spirited" frat boys roaming around looking for "mischief".'

Jane changed the subject. 'You still haven't told me about the Keg Queen.'

'I don't know the whole story. The only way to find out would be to ask Quinn—and she'd enjoy that. I only stumbled on her acclamation by chance when I was walking across campus with the tour guide. Heather told me that the Keg Queen gets the honour of driving the kegs to and from the distributor. I don't even know whether the loyal subjects had time to find out that Quinn can't drive, because my parents showed up in a panic with the campus police, who spotted both Quinn and me as under-age at once. So that's how we got thrown out. They're strict about a rule against minors at fraternity parties. And somehow my parents decided the big brother had to be partly responsible, even though I was the only one who stuck with our assigned tour guide the whole time. At least they didn't enjoy the whole experience any more than I did, even if they wasted a lot of good suffering when I wasn't around.' Sonny licked some cheese from his thumb. 'Quinn, on the other hand, was so pleased about how well she integrated into her chosen areas of college life that she didn't care about being rebuked. She still takes the offer from the place in Florida as a credit. And she thinks she's special because the instructor for the college prep course singled her out to meet and discuss scholarships—at least, that's what he said it was for. I told Quinn they don't give out scholarships based solely on the effort you put into your physical appearance, but she said he's the instructor and she's Vice-President of the Fashion Club and what would I know?'

'The whole experience has got to you, hasn't it?'

'Well, it's like you said. When are the best years of our lives? If there's nothing to hope for from college, is this as good as it gets?'

A sudden commotion in another booth disrupted the mood. Quinn was throwing her drink in the college prep instructor's face. 'No, you may not test whether my physical attributes are genuine!' she stormed as she left.

'I guess you never know', Sonny said.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'College Bored', by Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil<strong>_


	4. Twists And Turns

**Not So Different**

_**4. Twists And Turns**_

Sonny was trying to decide what name to use for a bleakly determined secret agent. _Melody? Harmony? Rhapsody? I like Rhapsody, but is it actually a name? Lyric! It alliterates with Lightbody. Lyric Lightbody. Has a good rhythm to it, too._

Meanwhile, with long-practiced filtering technique, Sonny maintained a minimum necessary awareness of the verbal flow outside. He _knew _there was nothing one of O'Neill's classes could teach him about Shakespeare, or anything else to do with Language Arts. Apparently, O'Neill had interrupted the class's study of Shakespeare—study wasn't the right word, but Sonny couldn't think of a better one—to talk about feelings on the subject of the closing down of Lawndale's cybercafé, as a result of the burglary of all the computer equipment. O'Neill, characteristically, called them 'our' feelings, but in fact what he wanted to talk about were his own feelings which, characteristically, he tried to project onto the students he couldn't even tell apart without his seating chart. He was calling Kevin Thompson 'Charles' until he double-checked. That caught Sonny's attention for a moment. _Charles? Is he actually confusing Kevin with Upchuck? That is so unfair to both of them—if anybody cared._

If Kevin weren't such a dunderhead, he could just have told O'Neill the truth: that he had no feelings whatsoever about 'alt dot lawndale dot com' closing down. But instead, with obvious strain, he suggested that he might be sad, or maybe angry?

'Are you asking me or telling me?' O'Neill said.

_Are you asking him or telling him_? Sonny thought. _O'Neill likes to think of himself as sensitive, and superficially he plays the part, but really the only feelings he's sensitive to are his own._

Jodie Landon was the opposite of Kevin Thompson: a conscientious hard-working student, always getting good grades as well as being committed to everything extra-curricular, the one who could best be relied on to articulate acceptably. O'Neill turned to her, and she gave him a sensible answer: 'I think the cybercafé served one very particular segment of the community, but it still pisses me off when people take what isn't theirs.' But O'Neill wasn't interested in sensible answers, or anybody else's but his own. All he did with her answer was to seize on one word and start blathering about 'community'.

Jane, when O'Neill called on her, knew the best way to handle him. He asked her for agreement and she answered, simply, 'No'. The bare negative didn't hinder O'Neill's flow, but it did keep Jane from getting involved.

Sonny should have done the same. He _knew _better. But there was still a part of his mind that insisted that if you were in a _school_, in a _class_, with a _teacher_, that should be enough to make it possible for some kind of education to occur. He'd been fooled that way—he'd fooled himself—expecting sense from O'Neill in self-esteem class! Jane had steered him straight from the beginning. She knew better than to engage voluntarily with O'Neill. But just once in a while, a self-deluding part of Sonny's mind interfered, and he found himself trying to point out what sentimental rubbish O'Neill was talking. People sitting in cybercafés staring at screens were not coming together with each other. There was no genuine connection between them. They didn't even speak to each other. They did not form a community.

All Sonny achieved (apart from getting O'Neill to call him 'Cindy', an appellation he reliably expected to hear repeated _ad nauseam _by malicious classmates) was to elicit the projection onto himself of one of O'Neill's ridiculous fantasies about an imaginary community he wanted to build, alleging that Sonny (O'Neill got the name right after one correction) was hinting at 'a return to the traditional coffeehouse of yore'.

'Are you asking me or telling me?' Sonny said, but O'Neill burbled on about the bonding of the audience with live performance until he had the class 'pledge' itself to making 'Sonny's dream' a reality as an extracurricular project. Sonny glanced around to make a mental note of which fellow-students' faces showed the strongest desire to work out their resentment of this 'press-ganging' on his person. Jane whispered to him that he was a visionary. _I deserved that._ His only consolation was his personal translation of 'extracurricular' to 'forget about it'.

That translation didn't work at home, though, when Quinn rushed off to an 'emergency' meeting of the Fashion Club and her mother was prompted to initiate a discussion with her husband and her son about extracurricular activities. _Just my luck_, thought Sonny. _My _father _talks to the Bursar at Middleton and comes away having for once grasped something, that it's all about money. My _mother _somehow misses that discussion and still insists on the importance of extracurriculars for college admission. Why couldn't it have been the other way round?_ It was a basic rule of Morgendorffer family life that a Helen trumped a Jake every time.

It was all right when Sonny's mother only asked him to _think _about extracurricular activities. He could _think about _anything—it was what he did best. Unfortunately his mother knew that. She looked closely at Sonny and spoke lightly of an alternative plan: summer music camp. This time his father discharged his assigned role by supporting his mother, or almost.

'I used to love hearing you play the trumpet, Sonny. It brought back memories of the old days, when I played the trumpet. I had to play the trumpet! Because my father had to send me to military school! That old—'

He could have gone on like this for an hour if his wife hadn't given the reins a tug by snapping out his name. He jerked and restarted.

'Oh! … ahh … anyway, you were a chip off the old block, Sonny! Why don't you play your trumpet any more?'

Sonny grimaced at the recollection of practising 'Pop Goes the Weasel' every day for a year. 'You ran over it when I was in fifth grade, two years after I quit anyway.' Sonny put down the paper he'd been reading and looked directly at his mother. 'So music camp could only be a punishment for serious misbehaviour.'

Sonny's mother smiled meaningly back at him. 'Of course, if there's some other extracurricular activity you'd enjoy more … something you chose yourself …'

Sonny had to acknowledge checkmate.

The next day he told Mr O'Neill he wanted to volunteer for the coffeehouse project.

'Great! You can read one of your essays! Maybe the one about feeling like a big misfit whom everyone hates. The other kids will really relate to that.'

_You mean you did. _'I compared individual classmates, by name, to specific barnyard animals.' _I know what would happen to me if I read that out to them. _Somewhat to Sonny's surprise, O'Neill seemed to get the point too. 'I was thinking more of fundraising than of performing', Sonny said. O'Neill's face fell, but he accepted the offer, assigning Sonny to selling chocolate bars door to door.

Sonny's next problem was that Jane's parents weren't pushing her to find extracurricular activities for her college applications. He'd feel safer on the streets if he had company, but he knew that Jane was bound to be safer in her own house painting than going from door to door with Sonny Morgendorffer, as well as more entertained.

His opening moves, in retrospect obviously poor ones, were appeals to her to join him in the name of friendship and solidarity. Of course that didn't work. She told him that she walked alone, marching to the beat of a different drummer. He looked around her room at her artworks and got a better idea.

'Do it for the opportunity to look inside people's houses and find out what screwed-up tastes they have.'

Jane's voice changed. 'I'm bringing a Polaroid.'

Venturing into the streets of Lawndale with Jane by his side, Sonny avoided incident until an encounter with a customer, a woman in a muumuu, who was more obese, sweated more copiously, and wheezed more uncontrollably than Sonny would have thought possible outside a hospital. She was ready to buy all two dozen of their chocolate bars, despite what she told them about her doctor's orders. Before they could complete the transaction, however, she passed out.

Sonny and Jane both felt they should do something, but what? After a moment Jane took a Polaroid of the woman flat on her back, to add to the one she'd already taken of the room. Maybe it was the flash which brought the woman back to her senses.

Despite her demonstration of hypoglycaemia, she still wanted to buy the chocolate bars, but they couldn't bring themselves to let her, even when she offered more than double rates. As they walked away, Jane couldn't help regretting the money they could have made.

Sonny gave her a satirical look. 'You think that's a good rate for homicide?'

'You always see the downside, don't you?'

'Hey, you at least came away with two Polaroids you might be able to use.'

Jane nodded. 'So, has this experience killed your enthusiasm for the whole project?'

'My what?'

'Your enth—oh, sorry.'

'Forgiven.'

'So', said Jane, 'are we taking these chocolate bars back to school, then?'

'What else is there?'

Jane shrugged. 'You're the one after credit for an extracurricular activity. You know they're not going to like this.'

They didn't like it.

They liked it even less because the woman to whom Sonny and Jane had refused to sell the chocolate (her name turned out to be Johannsen) called the school about the incident. Ms Li identified the two Lawndale High students implicated and called them into her office to explain. It was clear that she felt that their concern about the Johannsen woman's health had been excessive, even when they described the collapse they had witnessed. (They didn't mention the Polaroids.) Li suggested that for all they knew the woman meant to give the chocolate to her family.

'There were no signs at her house that she has any family', said Jane. 'She must have eaten them.' Sonny felt that the opportunity to hear this remark was more valuable than Jane's two Polaroids, evening the score between them.

Li still doubted that Sonny and Jane had been moved by an altruistic concern for another human being, but Sonny got to her when he pointed out that a potential lawsuit for wrongful death could embroil the school as well as individuals. She struck back by saying neutrally that if Sonny wouldn't do the fundraising, he couldn't get credit. After the Johannsen experience, Sonny felt it would be a long time before he wanted any more of that sort of human contact. Was he prepared to return to the alternative plan of reading something on opening night? In public? Jane, perceiving his dilemma, clinched the matter by quietly humming 'Pop Goes the Weasel!'

Another problem, the fundraising shortfall, was resolved much more easily. Quinn brought in a fortune. Sonny wasn't sure what she'd been selling, but so long as there were customers with Y chromosomes it could just as easily have been cigarette butts.

Now he just had to select one of his writings for his performance. The 'help' he solicited from Jane took the form of confirmation that 'Blank Past, Blank Future' was maudlin, 'They Lie To You' childish, and 'In the Pit Of Despair, You Can Always Fall Deeper' too optimistic.

'I wish I were dead', he groaned. Jane started to say that sounded promising, but Sonny ruled it out as banal. He'd have to write something new, he realised, something in a different vein: something, he decided, about Lyric Lightbody.

Suddenly he felt the itch to write.

'… _from my cold, dead hands!'_

_Lyric Lightbody's daily routine commenced screaming as it always did. Having slept, habitually, on her back with one hand under the pillow next to a handgun, she snapped instantly awake, snatching up the weapon as she rose to a seated position and then levelling it in turn at each corner of the room. No enemies lurked, except the one she could never escape. She put the barrel between her lips for forty-five silent seconds of staring at the trigger._

'_No, not today. Not while there are enemy agents I can kill instead. I'll be doing them a favour. Whoever they are this week.'_

Sonny paused for a moment to relish the possible reactions of an audience of his fellow students, before writing on.

The actual reaction when he eventually recited it in the reopened coffeehouse impressed him even more than his imaginings. Perhaps the audience were hoping for anything better than the acts that came before his: guitar-smashing in supposed angst; Goth 'poetry'; Kevin and Brittany meet Shakespeare—everybody loses …

As the audience listened intently to the account of Lyric Lightbody's cold-hearted lethality, Sonny found himself imagining the faces of his fellow performers plastered on the shooting gallery of cardboard cut-out figures his protagonist methodically disembowelled, impaled, crushed, flash-froze, decapitated, incinerated, and garrotted. He noticed that the female half of the audience seemed to be attending as closely as the male half to what he himself thought was essentially a 'guy story'. He hoped it wasn't only because the protagonist was a woman, a beautiful and deadly one with a sense for fashion which Sonny had mostly plagiarised from Quinn. Maybe they were just impressed by his ability to capture male attention with an artistic performance, if that's what they thought it was. There was no interruption until he brought the story to its close.

'… onlookers on that tropical beach would have seen only two beautiful young people in swimming costumes flirtatiously splashing each other before diving back into the waves, not two top secret agents at the end of a successful mission. Lyric Lightbody reflected almost with satisfaction on the termination of every member of the network of enemy infiltrators and the package of incontrovertible evidence now safely on its way to headquarters to confirm the identity of the deep-cover double agent who had set it all up. Headquarters knew that Agent Lightbody got the job done and left no loose ends. There was no harm in relaxing for a moment from the rigours of her profession, and admiring Marcello's physique was relaxing. He certainly did look good in a swimsuit; she carefully stored the memory. Then she dived again and he followed her.

'If the hypothetical onlookers had waited a short time, they would have seen the two people go into the water and then one only, the woman, return to the sand. She walked without haste to her beach bag and picked it up, neither her face nor her posture revealing any reaction as the man still did not re-emerge. For a moment Lyric gazed out again at the water beneath which Marcello was held in the trap she had prepared in advance and then lured him into. Then she turned back towards the hotel, where new instructions from headquarters doubtless awaited her. As she walked she spoke silently to Marcello. _You never knew that I had guessed from the first, did you? Not until you saw me shooting up through the water away from you forever. But then that sort of shortsightedness is fitting in a mole._'

* * *

><p>'I think somebody had to explain to Kevin what a mole is in order to dissuade him from leading a protest march on the Molish Embassy.'<p>

'There aren't any embassies in Lawndale.'

'I know that', Sonny said, 'and you know that, but how many members of the football team would you trust to be equally well informed?'

Jane conceded the point.

'However', Sonny continued, 'one or two of them possibly have had their lawns ruined by the little diggers, or perhaps have some familiarity with the tropes of espionage fiction, and so knew enough not to go looking for a specifically Molian Embassy.'

'You got them really revved up, though. You were the surprise hit of the evening. Everybody says so. You do realise this means they'll want you to perform again?'

'Depends who you mean by "they". Second thoughts were written all over O'Neill's face. Has that man ever in his life made a decision he hasn't regretted?'

'Your extracurricular credit depends on Li as well as on O'Neill.'

'I think my idea for a follow-up piece should be enough to rattle both of them. In fact I have go now for a chat with O'Neill about it. I'm asking him for background research help. I think what I have to say will chase him straight to Li to cancel any future performances, and I should still get my credit as a sop to keep me quiet.'

* * *

><p>'I have this idea for another Lyric Lightbody story, set in a high school, and I want to make sure I understand some things about the setting from a teacher's perspective as well as a student's.'<p>

O'Neill chuckled anxiously. 'Another spy story? Set in a school? Don't you think that might be a little … incongruous?' He gave a fidgety shrug.

Sonny settled himself. 'The enemy is using the school as a base for an undercover network. The school principal is the mole. Lyric Lightbody gets on the trail because of the bizarre security precautions the principal insists on taking, which can't have any legitimate purpose. Then, by chance, as she's reconnoitring the school, she encounters a student who's snapped, psychologically speaking, under the constant pressure of ostracism by fellow-students. He's on a roof with a sniper rifle, but Lyric Lightbody intercepts him before he can actually open up on everybody in sight. A bond forms between these two lonely misfits', Sonny said with a straight face, 'and she persuades him that a better way for him to strike back against the system is to act as her informant on the inside. Of course the story ends with him providing covering fire for her in the inevitable apocalyptic shoot-out at the school.'

'Oh my.' O'Neill gave a nervous smile and began fidgeting again. 'Well, that's a … novel and, er … dramatic conception you've got there, Sonny.' He looked into Sonny's face, which gave nothing away. 'But perhaps … um … you've already made such a wonderful contribution to the success of the coffeehouse. You could rest on your laurels, if I can put it that way, and give some of the other students a chance for a turn in the limelight, so to speak.'

'Well …'—Sonny let it look as if he needed time to think this over—'if the school really feels I've done enough to earn that extracurricular credit …'

'I'll discuss it with Principal Li! That's what I'll do!'

'You can let her know that I'll keep working on my story as a private project, just in case the school ever wants me to do another public presentation.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Café Disaffecto' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	5. Unhealthy Business

**Not So Different**

_**5. Unhealthy Business**_

It was all Quinn's fault. It was only fair that she should pay. It would be a legitimate transaction.

It was Quinn who had brought up the subject of the new super-mall—'Not just a mall! _The Mall of the Millennium!_'—at the breakfast table. She tried to make it sound like her official duty as Vice-President of the Fashion Club to inspect it. There was no chance of her getting away with that while her mother knew how much shopping she did and what grades she was getting at school. Helen Morgendorffer might see it as important for her children to get credit for extracurricular activities, but she wouldn't let them get leverage over her out of it.

Her husband, on the other hand, was just as exultant to discover that his daughter was Vice-President of the Fashion Club as he had been every other time he discovered this novel fact. Sonny didn't want to have a mind like his father's, but he couldn't deny that it had its compensatory advantages. Quinn tried to take advantage of it too. Suddenly her father wanted her fashion advice and she was happy to give it if she could use the occasion as a pretext for a visit to the 'Mall of the Millennium'. Sonny supposed that from her point of view it cost nothing and had to be worth a shot, but as usual Helen trumped Jake.

Sonny's only personal contribution to the conversation had been a few sarcastic gibes at Quinn, but nevertheless Quinn had implanted thoughts of the mall in his mind. That must have been a contributing factor in making him offer up the mall as an example (of whatever-it-was the class was supposed to be about) when Mrs Bennett, the economics teacher, asked for one (and turned to him in resignation when no other student had anything to say). And that, in turn, was why the economics class was now on a bus to the mall.

Sonny reflected on his bad luck in having a second teacher foist responsibility for a class activity on him so soon. More than one person in his Language Arts class had resented being conscripted into Mr O'Neill's coffeehouse project, an idea which the teacher had most unfairly fathered on him. This time, at least, everybody in the class had been in favour of the field trip except for Sonny himself and Jane, so there shouldn't be similarly forceful objections (Sonny's hand pressed against the memory of a bruise). Sonny had tried to argue for an exemption on the basis of a spurious allergic condition, but it hadn't worked, despite or perhaps partly because of Jane's over-enthusiastic and disturbingly graphic invention of 'corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing' story. 'Oozing pus'? Really, sometimes an artist's active visual imagination was not an advantage.

To Sonny's more literary than artistic mind, the striking feature now was the dramatic irony that he actually did feel sick.

He didn't usually suffer from travel-sickness. Was it a result of being confined with Kevin and Brittany, who couldn't decide whether to squabble disturbingly, reconcile nauseatingly, or express at full throat their uncomplicated enthusiasm for this vile excursion? Was it a result of being confined with Upchuck, who was trying to persuade every attractive girl on the bus to agree to model for the bikinis his father had (allegedly) asked him to buy for his secretary? (Every attractive girl or just every girl? Perhaps to Upchuck there was no difference between 'attractive' and 'still above room temperature'.) Had Sonny's mind's revulsion from the super-mall affected his body? Or was he feeling queasy because of his continuing sense that he was himself responsible for bringing about the whole situation?

Feeling sick did not, at least, disable his antennae for danger, with which he continued to scope out the excursion's progress. Being crammed together in the parking lot tram was a danger spot. It did not surprise him when it gave Upchuck the opportunity to give Brittany an unwelcome surreptitious squeeze without her realising who was responsible. The close confinement, he knew grimly, could equally well give the ill-disposed an opportunity for surreptitious physical contact of a more explicitly violent kind. Although he was spared on this occasion, the thought intensified his nausea, and by the time the parking lot loudspeakers were announcing that they were 'Welcome' to the mall, he could not restrain himself from vomiting in front of everybody in the sure knowledge of how the action would confirm his social status.

Jane impassively wished him '_Bienvenidos_' to the mall. Sonny recognised the expression on her face: she was getting visual inspiration.

'You're not drawing this, okay?' he whispered to her.

'It would be a pity to give up such a striking colour, but if I had something else to draw …'

Sonny drew Jane aside. 'I'm too sick to haggle. Sketches for another portrait?'

'Done.'

Inside, the super-mall proved as hideous as Sonny and Jane had feared. Mrs Bennett was puzzling over a map and struggling to come to terms with the system of colour-coding which was supposed to help guide shoppers through the different sections of the mall, although Sonny suspected that it was really intended to facilitate the Gruen transfer. An indoor (!) rollercoaster loaded with screaming youngsters added to the auditory and spatial disorientation. Nearly every store specialised in just one narrow category of merchandise, like the bikinis at Upchuck's desired destination, so that the specific disorientation of the finest possible gradations of product choice could be added to the general effect of the total super-mall experience. Gift stores advertised, to the discerning eye, that nothing they sold had any genuine desirability, by presenting their purpose solely as the vending of objects which purchasers could then give away to other people.

The less discerning eyes of Sonny's dimmer classmates, on the other hand, were glazed with pleasure at the discovery of a whole store devoted to selling just one thing or the inventiveness which had produced so many different colours for the mall's sections. (At least, Jane pointed out with her particular artist's eye, they seemed to have missed 'puke green', before the expression on Sonny's face triggered a regretful twinge on her part.) Bennett seemed more focussed on hurrying them along towards an appointment with some busy mall executives, until she saw a store devoted to an appalling range of kitsch collectibles which turned out to be the obsession of herself and her husband. Selling collectibles, like selling gifts, reduced the pressure to demonstrate any independently valuable characteristics in the stock.

Bennett recovered soon enough to hustle her class into their meeting with the mall executives punctually. Sonny would have had no interest in the details of the executives' attempts to pump his classmates even if he had not still been feeling below par, but he couldn't help taking in enough to feel worse. He did notice at least that some of the things that he might have said if he could have been bothered were said by other people. Jane made a smart remark he liked—'I always look for security guards leading away someone in handcuffs; shoplifters are the best judges of merchandise'; Jodie Landon offered a perceptive objective analysis, pointing out the silliness of having middle-aged suits market 'fun' to teenagers. Meanwhile Brittany was paying no attention at all to those same suits because she was more interested in the conference room's mirrored wall. _Probably a two-way mirror_, Sonny thought. _Whoever's behind it is probably getting his jollies watching Brittany primp. Not my problem._

Then one of the executives made Sonny _his_ problem by asking him directly how often he went to the mall.

'That depends on how often somebody offers to pay me to participate in a market research focus group. I don't know about anybody else, but _I'm _not doing that for free.'

'A … focus group?' The man took a step backward.

'Yes, you know. Where some marketing … _types_ get a bunch of … subjects together so they can pump them for information while some other marketing types watch from behind the two-way mirror.'

He had Jane's attention. 'Two-way mirror, huh?' She reached back towards a light switch. That got the mall executives' attention. 'I don't think you want to do that', one of them said. _That was a projection worthy of Mr O'Neill_, Sonny thought. _Anybody who knows Jane will know that you're only making sure that she _will _want to do that. _Then Jane turned the lights out and three observers were clearly visible behind the mirrored wall. That got everybody's attention. _Our work here is done_, thought Sonny, as one of the suits turned the lights back on, too late to stop the rising murmur.

The suit-in-chief attempted a limping justification of this 'live demonstration' of a focus group, but Jodie skewered him. Sonny had defocused his attention again, but gathered that Jodie was making a mock-innocent protest about the mall not being fun combined with an acutely calculated implied threat to bring media attention down on their heads. The suit-in-chief tried to buy her off with a free coupon, but she rejected his first offer as an insult. When he made a higher bid Jane got into the game, saying that he was still being insulting. The executive ended by turning out his pockets to offer twenty-dollar merchandise coupons all round. That triggered the switch from 'attention' to 'feeding frenzy'.

'So much for principles', Sonny said. He spoke in a low voice, more than half to himself, but Jodie caught the words.

'I don't see any principles involved', she said before joining the coupon-collecting crowd.

'Youthful ideals. I come to bury them, not to praise them', said Sonny.

'What are you talking about?' said Jane. 'That's twenty bucks!' She rushed not to miss out.

_What _am_ I talking about? I don't know, but I still feel sick._

Back in the corridor, Bennett allocated vacuous assignments to her students, but they were more interested in seeing which stores they'd got coupons for. Jane was pleased to find that hers was for 'Scissor Wizard', as she actually wanted a new pair. She'd generously picked up a coupon for Sonny as well, which turned out be for 'The Doo Dad Shop'.

'Doodads', said Sonny, and grimaced. 'Thanks, I guess. Do you know the difference between a doodad, a jigger, a widget, and a doohickey?'

Jane shrugged.

'Maybe this is a chance to find out', lied Sonny, rubbing his guts as they headed to their joint 'assignment'. 'Just my luck to be sent to observe patterns at the food court in my present condition.'

At the food court Sonny's priority was avoiding close contact with the people they were supposed to be observing, but it still wasn't hard to carry out their instructions to spot a pattern.

'Hungry people in,' Sonny said, 'stuffed people out. Task complete. Theirs and ours.'

'Unless we try out the pattern ourselves?'

'Participant observation? You go ahead if you like. My belly still doesn't feel up to it, and I'm not sacrificing it for scholarship.'

* * *

><p>From the first time that Quinn had made a suggestion at a Fashion Club meeting, Club President Sandi Griffin had been making veiled hints about Quinn's wanting to be president herself. This time, as they ate lunch at the Mall of the Millennium's food court, Sandi was saying that Quinn's suggestion to give a makeover to 'some hideously out-of-style nobody' was so brilliant that it proved the other club members should impeach her (Sandi) and make Quinn president. Quinn protested that all the credit for the inspiration belonged to Sandi's suggestion that the club do more for the community, and that Sandi was a great leader.<p>

Sandi said, 'That's because you guys are such … great … leadettes!'

The cracks papered over, the other two members of the club, Stacy and Tiffany, joined the discussion of the girl they'd help and the party they'd throw to raise funds for the project. The four clustered at one end of the table, creating a small but noticeable separation from the shrivelled boy at the other end, who spoke up for the first time to ask whether he could come to the party. He had the strange appearance of having grown old without ever having grown up.

'Listen … um … guy', said Quinn, 'why don't you just wait in the car for us?'

'But you said if I drove you I could hang out with you.'

'Oh, all right!' said Quinn. 'But don't try to participate, okay? We're in the middle of a meeting.'

Once again Stacy and Tiffany broke the tension by pointing out two girls standing together on the other side of the food court who would be ideal candidates for a community-service makeover, their fashion-deprived status clearly visible even from just a distant rear view. The whole club started walking towards them, with their nameless and nearly faceless chauffeur a few respectful steps behind. As Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany chattered cheerfully about what they might do for their two charity cases, Quinn stepped forward to tap the even more horribly unfashionable one on the shoulder. When the slight non-descript figure turned in response, Quinn could not completely smother her wail.

'Good to see you, too', Sonny said. 'And so unexpected.'

'I'm going to be sick', Quinn said.

'Is this something that runs in the family?' said Sonny's friend Jane.

Quinn knew the way her brother looked and especially the way he dressed—if you could call what he did 'dressing'. She wouldn't normally have mistaken him for a girl the way other people did, even across a crowded room. But she'd been fooled because he was standing around in a mall, of all places, looking almost relaxed about it, and most of all because he'd been in a public place with another human being as if they were just two normal people hanging out together.

She hastily turned to fend off the rest of the Fashion Club while she 'interviewed' the two 'candidates' for makeover, then urgently ushered Sonny and Jane to one side. For one moment she was grateful that Sonny didn't try to humiliate her in front of the others, but it was only because he was waiting to threaten her with a hint that he'd tell their parents she'd been ditching school.

Quinn's shoulders would have slumped if she hadn't been conscious of how it would have made her outfit look unfashionable.

* * *

><p>Reading the insignia of defeat on Quinn's face when he caught her ditching school was almost reward enough for Sonny.<p>

Almost.

While he was thinking what else to extract from the situation, Quinn said, 'What do you want? I could give your gir—I mean, your friend Jane a free makeover.'

Jane interjected before Sonny could respond. 'I think cash would be a better idea.'

'I wouldn't mind a month where I didn't have to do any chores around the house because somebody else always got there first', Sonny said.

Quinn's face had the look of somebody reading the bill for a credit card spree. 'A month?'

'Have you thought about how easily Mom could ban you from even entering a mall? I'm sure neither of us would want that to happen to somebody who's so caring about her brother, especially when he's unwell. Too unwell, really, to catch the bus back. But luckily you got a ride here'—Sonny knew that Quinn avoided public transport because it was 'unfashionable' and deduced an explanation for Quinn's male companion's presence—'so you can give a ride back home to me. And to my friend.'

As soon as a rendezvous had been arranged, they headed with expedition in different directions, although Sonny was able to overhear, before they got out of earshot, Quinn responding to an unwelcome question about his identity by telling her driver that he had been hired to drive, not to talk. Sonny figured 'hired' was an exaggeration—he wouldn't be getting money from Quinn, or anything else tangible.

Jane thanked Sonny for including her in the ride home.

Sonny said, 'I'm still not feeling the best. I may need support on the way back and I don't want to face that crowd alone. Also, the crowding will make things worse for Quinn, always a plus. Upchuck would have suited me for that purpose better than you if he'd been available.'

'You may not want to do me any favours, but thanks anyway. Oh look, Scissor Wizard.'

Scissor Wizard was not a hardware, kitchen, stationery, sewing, or art store (or a magic store, come to that), but a hair salon. As Jane entered she was greeted by a hairdresser who told her she was just in time. As Sonny came into view, the hairdresser blanched.

'Oh, and you, you're … ah … well … oh, wait!' She blinked and gave a double take. 'Of course _you'll _want attention from a specialist. In boys' hairstyles, I mean.'

Jane produced her coupon and explained that all she wanted was a pair of scissors. The hairdresser explained that Scissor Wizard didn't sell scissors, but could cut her hair in a style to match the television show of her choice. Unfortunately they'd never heard of _Sick, Sad World_. For the hell of it, Sonny and Jane began discussing the hair of victims of animal tramplings who'd appeared on television in home videos. Jane spoke fondly of the hairstyle of a woman who'd collided with a kangaroo, complete with large clods of dirt. The hairdresser said her next appointment had arrived and suggested they come back later. In exchange for Jane's coupon she offered a can of mousse.

'How about the moose trampling victim?' said Sonny, straight-faced.

Jane matched him. 'His hair was too bloody.'

The hairdresser cracked and redeemed Jane's coupon for cash, leaving them free to seek out the Doo Dad Shop. They stood outside it, gazing appalled at the dross in the window. The business model could hardly have been clearer if every item had been labelled 'sucker bait', as Kevin and Brittany opportunely confirmed by emerging apparently satisfied. The sight engendered a morbid fascination in Sonny, and he was drawn in along with Jane. There they were both traumatised when the entire staff descended on Sonny, babbling a meaningless jingle about doodads—armfuls of which he had apparently won by being the ten-thousandth customer to enter the shop—and subjecting him to a cruel and unusual bout of flash photography (for publicity purposes). He staggered out again as soon as he found the strength to shake off the salespeople, supported by a concerned Jane and feeling grateful that his stomach was already empty. He hadn't even got to use the coupon. All he wanted to do now was find Quinn, with her driver, and get home.

Even the sight of Quinn jammed into the back seat with the rest of the Fashion Club to leave room for Sonny and Jane in the front couldn't cheer Sonny up. But back at home things evened up as Quinn made good on her commitment. Sonny's parents noticed too. One evening as Quinn was clearing the dirty dinner dishes, Helen thanked her and remarked on how considerate she had become recently.

_Ten days down, twenty to go_, Sonny thought.

Jake expressed the desire for a cup of coffee and wondered whether anybody else wanted one. He looked at Sonny, and immediately Quinn said, 'Let me get it, Dad.' She sighed the sigh of a good loser. 'Let me.' She looked towards Sonny to see whether he wanted a cup of coffee as well.

'I won't have one now', he said. _I have a commitment to make good on as well. _'I'm going over to Jane's again.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Malled' by Neena Beber<strong>_


	6. False Flag Operation

**Not So Different**

_**6. False Flag Operation**_

'Time for a break', Jane said, and stopped sketching.

Sonny put down the magazine he'd been pretending to read as he posed, stretched, and heaved a deep sigh.

'What's that about?' said Jane.

Sonny sighed again. 'My mother's threatening to redecorate my room again.'

'You don't trust her taste?'

'It's not that', said Sonny. 'The last owners kept a shut-in relative in the room.'

'You mean like Trent', Jane interjected.

'No, the real deal', said Sonny. 'An actual schizophrenic. The walls and the floor are all padded. That's not something you get very often, and it suits me. Redecoration means no more freak room for the freak.'

'And you've never shown this to me? You're a dead man.'

'Empty threats. If you kill me you won't be able to finish this new portrait.' Sonny stretched again. 'I've fended off threats of redecoration so far by stumbling and using the padding to break my fall, but I don't know how long my mother will keep going for that.'

'Would it be more convincing for her if you fell over somewhere else in the house and cut yourself badly?'

'One day I'll have a friend who cares what happens to me.'

'One day _I'll_ have a friend who lets me see his incredibly cool room.'

Sonny shook his head. 'Having parents like yours has made you forget what other people's parents are like. You've met mine, anyway. When I come over here, they just assume we're chaperoned. They don't have a clue that even when your parents are home, it's practically the same as when they're not. Think about Helen and Jake Morgendorffer as you know them, and imagine what they'd be like if their teenage son had a teenage girl in his bedroom.'

Jane turned away from Sonny and picked up his magazine. 'What's this? _Mercenary Times_?'

'It's a bit like _Soldier of Fortune_. You know, that magazine that …'

Jane cut him off. 'You don't need to explain what _Soldier of Fortune _is.' She flipped through the pages. 'I didn't know there were others.'

'A whole genre, with stylistic variations. I've been reading a lot of them recently as general background research for Lyric Lightbody stories. This one's for people who think the others are too genteel.'

Jane extended the magazine towards Sonny, pointing at a small ad. ' "Toxic Waste"? Odd jobs wanted? Removals a specialty?'

'I think we can guess what kind of things that advertiser specialises in removing. Or what he wants people to think he specialises in. There's always the possibility that something like that is a scam. Or it could be a honey trap. The unsuspecting reader contacts Toxic Waste about a bit of wet work to be done …'

Jane held up a hand to slow Sonny. 'Honey trap? Wet work? You may be on top of your research but I'm not.'

'Sorry. I'm mastering the argot—the jargon. What I mean is that some agency like the FBI might have placed the ad. It's a way for them to catch anybody who approaches them about an "odd job" which turns out to be illegal, that is, in this case, probably murderous.'

'Bad news for anybody who answers an ad like that and ends up talking to "No Loose Ends" Lightbody.'

'At the moment I see Lyric as specialising in the more definitively "wet jobs" herself. But I'm thinking about it. Anyway, there's plenty of possibilities in those magazines. It's a sound general principle to do more research than you end up using in your writing.'

Jane was still flipping through the pages. 'Did you see this recruitment ad?' she asked.

'Oh yes', said Sonny. 'General "Buck" Conroy.' He paused and repeated the name 'Buck' more slowly. 'I remember thinking that his rank was probably a self-conferred one in the worldwide army of macho pricks. Something about his ad makes me confident that he's not an FBI agent. Of course there's an overlap, but still …'

Jane let the magazine fall back on the chair. 'Anyway', she said, 'back to work.'

* * *

><p>Mr O'Neill was talking with Brittany Taylor about—about whatever it was the class was about (Brittany wouldn't know, that was a given): Sonny would easily clue in if he had to participate, so keeping the information consciously centred was a waste of time when he could be thinking about Lyric Lightbody and 'Buck' Conroy. Then Principal Li burst into the room and hoped insincerely that she wasn't disrupting the learning process, grabbing just enough of Sonny's attention for him to agree (silently) with O'Neill that she was doing no such thing, although his reasoning was, he was sure, the converse of O'Neill's.<p>

_Wait a minute_, thought Sonny. _Was he calling Brittany 'Normandy'? Can I blame him for finding France more interesting than his students? _I _find France more interesting than most of these idiots. Still … he is the teacher … but still …_

While Sonny's mind wandered, a fraction of it noted vaguely that Li's irruption was connected with a pending visit by talent scouts looking for potential fashion models. Unfortunately, tuning out Li's frequency had the unintended side-effect of tuning him in when Brittany's frequency opened up. 'They got my letter!'

_A letter from one dopey tenth-grader sucks them in? Obviously a scam of some kind—that is, more than just the basic level of valuelessness fundamental to the whole fashion industry. Still, not _my _problem … I mean, I may get mistaken for a female sometimes, but never for a female model … or a male model, come to that … so … where was I with that story? _Sonny had succeeded in tuning out both Li and Brittany, but he paid more attention when Jane spoke, making some no doubt excellent point about the obsession of the fashion industry with the superficialities of youth and good looks at the expense of anything meaningful. Right though she was, Sonny startled himself by reflecting that Jane had some theoretical potential as a model. She was a runner and looked it, fit and lean, which could put her in the running (ha!) for a spot as a sports model in an ad for running shoes, right after she had her brain replaced with a cauliflower.

Jane's involvement in the discussion made it feel more relevant to Sonny, but he probably wouldn't have participated just to tag-team her if Li hadn't increased the incentive by giving him a hook. She was saying something about the great financial rewards available in modelling and about opportunities for students to fulfil their potential. Sonny raised his hand.

'Excuse me, but do these financial rewards extend to the school as well?'

Li blanched. 'That is really none of your business.'

'I want to fulfil my potential.' Sonny tried giving Li his nearest approximation to a candidly positive expression, hoping that she didn't yet know him well enough to be automatically suspicious. 'I'm just trying to learn more about economics.'

It seemed to work. 'The school is receiving a fee for its cooperation, but every cent is going to capital improvements! We're finally going to get those bulletproof skylights for the swimming pool!'

Jane jumped back into the ring. 'Well, I for one am very excited about this. I can feel myself getting into the modelling spirit.'

'Excellent!' Li said.

'May I be excused? I'd like to go to the girls' room and vomit up breakfast.'

* * *

><p>Sonny saw Jane look up as somebody approached their cafeteria table from behind him. He turned his head and saw that it was Jodie Landon. As she sat down he gave her the thousand-yard stare. She looked from him to Jane and back again and said, 'You know, you don't have to be so negative all the time. If somebody wants to take a modelling class, you can't stop her.'<p>

'No', Sonny said, 'I can't. You're right.' He suddenly thought of Quinn.

Jodie looked back at Jane. 'The whole thing is completely voluntary, so what's the problem?'

'Good question', said Sonny, looking down. 'What _is _the problem? Is there a problem?'

'I haven't got a problem', Jane said heartily. 'If you want to take up modelling, Jodie, I'm happy to eat your lunch for you from now on. Where is your lunch, by the way?'

'As it happens, I ate during the student council meeting.'

Jane grinned and shrugged one shoulder. 'Look, all I'm saying is, if you're going to give lunch away, give it to me, not some stray dog. That's not asking too much, is it?'

Sonny looked up again. 'Is the student council endorsing this idea of Li's? Who else are we going to being inviting in?'

Jane chimed in. 'Yeah, fair's fair. Why should the drug dealers have to wait behind the parking lot? Or how about go-go bars looking for lap dancers? There are all sorts of possibilities for recruiters here. Even Kevin and Upchuck must have potential to fulfil, given the right opportunity.'

Jodie winced. 'Look, just forget I said anything.' She got up and left the table.

'Recruiters, huh?' Sonny said. 'You may just have given me an idea.'

'An idea for a story, or an idea for a Morgendorffer master manipulation?'

'Don't know yet.' Sonny looked over his shoulder at Jodie disappearing, then back to Jane. 'What's the deal with her, anyway? Why was she interested in what either of _us_ had to say?'

'Oh, you know, it's the whole student council thing. She wants everybody to be happy together or something. Plus, you're the only one in our grade who's at the same level as her academically, and that kind of thing's important to her.'

Sonny grunted dismissively. 'So, did she come and sit at your table for lunch before I was around?'

'I told you, that whole student council deal. She takes it seriously. First getting elected and then being on it, she talks to everybody sometimes. Better her on student council than anybody else, don't you think?'

'I guess.' Sonny took a last bite of his lunch.

* * *

><p>The two 'talent scouts' showed up in Sonny's economics class. He summed them up inside forty-five seconds as exactly the sort of vacuous posers he had expected, and switched mental channels. He almost switched back when he sensed them homing in on Jane for some reason, but somehow she immediately fended them off without difficulty, so he figured he could get the story from her later.<p>

Jane was surprised when she learned that he hadn't noticed what had gone on. 'Don't try to tell me that you didn't pay attention to Brittany's little promenade.'

'Notice, yes, pay attention, no. My position on Brittany is that I'm not blind, I'm not stupid, I'm not a eunuch, and I'm not interested. It stood out that she was wearing a trenchcoat today, and then she took it off for those charlatans to show that she had a strapless gown underneath it, and they invited her to do a runway walk, and I ignored the rest. I had something else on my mind.'

'You mean, like economics?'

'No, I don't usually have to pay attention to economics in economics class. I was finishing off some French homework.'

Jane was curious. 'What about the economics homework?'

'There was only some old stuff from the last class which I already finished off when I was in math. And I took care of the history homework in Language Arts, so now when I get home I can do my own work, or none. And don't look at me like that. I've got a system going here, honed over time. You know as well as I do that I know more than most teachers. It's not my fault and I'm not going to pretend it's otherwise. So I know just how much attention I have to pay in class and I see no point in paying any more than that. I still noticed those two freaks circling you. I wouldn't have minded an excuse to tackle them, but you seemed to manage them so neatly yourself that I decided to let it slide for the time being. Now I'm just waiting to hear the end of the story.'

'Well, they pretended to say some nice things about Brittany, but I saw the gestures they were making at each other, and I can tell you that they're not interested in anybody that … well-developed. Then they started telling me that I have what they call "an interesting look". I didn't have to say anything, though, I just let them see what I'd been working on and they backed off. Here, look.' Jane handed Sonny a page torn from a sketchpad. It showed a stereotypical man-stranded-in-the-desert cartoon, with the mandatory circling vultures unmistakably topped with skilled caricatures of the heads of the two agency representatives. Sonny permitted one corner of his mouth to rise in amusement.

He wasn't amused that evening, though, when Quinn came in while he was sitting with their parents at the dinner table and announced that she had been accepted into an exclusive modelling class.

'I knew it', he muttered, and was just loud enough for his mother to overhear.

'Do you know something about this, Sonny?'

Sonny sighed gently and explained what he knew: mainly that the people behind it were obviously scammers, though he didn't have the details, and that the school was going along with it because Principal Li was hoping to receive money which she said she wanted to spend on bulletproof skylights for the swimming pool. Knowing Li, Sonny was confident that she really did want to buy bulletproof skylights for the swimming pool. He was less confident that she ever really would see the money.

Sonny could have gone on at some length about his more general evaluations of the fashion and modelling industries, but it wasn't necessary. His mother had the same knowledge and the same views, and no desire to see her daughter tempted by vanity into dropping out of school in the hope of a career where her value would be determined solely by how she looked. In fact, she was making Sonny start to doubt himself, because now he was doing two things that felt wrong: taking a selfless interest in Quinn, and adopting a stance that his parents endorsed. At least, his mother endorsed it and his father echoed her, but at first Sonny wasn't sure whether Jake understood the topic. As Quinn began arguing her case, however, she started quoting the detailed remarks made by the male vulture (he went by the name of Claude) about features of her anatomy, and her father made plain both his understanding and his fury. Before the conversation could get much further, it was interrupted by a telephone call which turned out to come from the female vulture, cognominated Romonica. Quinn was allegedly one of only a few students specially selected for a complimentary coaching session, because of her 'special' qualities. Her mother already felt that Quinn was special. Sonny wasn't so sure about that, but he kept those feelings to himself. He was sure that he could agree with his parents to this extent, that Quinn was already as special as he wanted her to be without any need for Romonica's intervention.

Quinn, however, wasn't going down without a fight, and she had a good weapon handy.

'You always say I can be anything I want to be!'

_Smooth move_, Sonny couldn't help admitting._ Always keep handy any ammunition handed to you by the opposition._ He decided to contribute a little harassing fire of his own, aimed in an impartial spray. 'Does that mean I can become Miss America?' He got no response from either mother or sister, but he was artistically satisfied without one. Meanwhile, Helen conceded permission for Quinn to participate in the coaching session on the explicit stipulation that that would be the end of it.

Once Quinn had left the room, their mother asked Sonny to be in the audience for the coaching session to keep an eye on Quinn. She knew she'd have to offer him something in exchange, and on this occasion Sonny was happy to settle for a non-monetary bribe: 'No more talk about redecorating my room for twelve months.'

'Done', said his mother, and 'Done', said Sonny.

'You're getting softer', she said.

_If only you knew_, Sonny thought to himself. _There are so many ways this could go wrong for Quinn, I'd pretty much decided to go anyway. But I'll keep that knowledge private._ He felt validated when his father expressed his pleasure at having a son who was such a good big brother to his little sister, a real chip off the old block.

* * *

><p>Jane sat in the school auditorium with her sketchpad open on her knees as she watched the selected few on stage taking instruction from Romonica and Claude. Sonny was in the seat next to her, on the aisle as usual so that he didn't have to have more than one neighbour and was poised for a quick getaway.<p>

So far Quinn had been getting praise for the way she carried out the exercises. Jane glanced quickly at Sonny. As usual, his facial expression revealed nothing.

'Sharden froyda', he said abruptly, or at least that's what it sounded like to Jane. She looked at him again. 'It's a German word', he said. 'It means what they just had them pretend to do, savouring somebody else's misfortune.'

'Oh', said Jane. 'I wondered what that expression they have models wear was supposed to be. I thought they were just sulking.'

On stage, the girls were now being told to change to the expression of a helpless kitten awaiting a rescue from the pound to save them from 'kitty heaven'.

'Or kitty hell, as the case may be', said Sonny, to Jane's amusement.

The next exercise involved simulating the unexpected discovery of a headless corpse in your car. Your _brand-new _car!

'And it's a smelly old corpse', Sonny said, imitating Romonica's affected accent.

'In a really bad outfit', said Jane emphatically.

'You know', Sonny said, 'this makes less and less sense.'

Before he could expand on that thought, they were interrupted by the baffling arrival of Trent, who sat down next to his sister and exchanged a little relaxed banter with her and a brief greeting with Sonny. When Jane tried to get Trent to explain why he was there, his first responses made no sense to her. Eventually he pointed first to the stage, then to himself, then at the stage again, then at himself again, saying 'You know. Models … musician. Models … musician.'

For a moment Jane had the idea that Trent was casting a side glance towards Sonny. Was there some kind of message he was trying to get across, maybe some 'guys only' thing? It seemed unlikely, but before she could give the matter any more thought, they were interrupted again by Brittany, who sat down in the row in front of them bawling. When Jane asked her what was wrong, she complained about being told that she was not good enough to be a model.

'I should be up there on stage with the winners instead of out here in the audience with the losers!'

Jane saw Sonny looking at her. He glanced at Brittany and then back at her. This time she suspected she could read him.

'Shardenfroyda?' she said.

'This whole thing was Brittany's idea, after all', he said ambiguously.

At that point Kevin arrived to comfort Brittany. As Brittany wept into his shirt, Jane explained Brittany's problem to him. She noticed that Sonny had averted his gaze and was once again looking at the stage. Romonica was asking for male volunteers from the audience so that the girls could try 'ensemble posing'. Several members of the football team clambered enthusiastically onto the stage, but they still wanted one more. Claude asked Kevin to join them and he was vacuously eager to oblige. Brittany cried even harder.

'Don't be sad, Brittany', Jane said. 'He's with the winners now.'

As Romonica and Claude guided the couples into poses supposed to be intimate, Jane noticed Sonny unobtrusively rising from his seat and making his way out of the auditorium. Meanwhile on stage, the boys were being asked to take off their shirts. They weren't as enthusiastic as they had been at the beginning, but they went along with it. Then the girls were asked to rub the boys' chests. Quinn was the only one who balked. She covered by saying she had to go to the bathroom, and quickly exited. Brittany changed from sobbing to one exasperated growl at what Kevin was up to and then left the room as well, passing Sonny as he returned to his seat.

A minute or two later Ms Li came on stage. It took another thirty seconds or so for her to register fully what was going on between the boys and the girls, but as soon as she did she broke it up. Exposed to her disapproval, the boys couldn't put their shirts back on fast enough. There was no question that the event was over. Jane glanced sideways at Sonny. What was the emotion his face was hinting at?

* * *

><p>Sonny tapped a fingernail against his teeth. <em>Do I feel confident that 'General' Buck Conroy will be as easily drawn in as Romonica and Claude? <em>He took another look at the ad in _Mercenary Times_. _Sure, why not? And anyway, there's nothing to lose from the experiment. _He ran his eyes over his draft letter again.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Dear General Buck Conroy<strong>_

_**I read your magazine Mercenary Times and I think it's great and I like to read all about mercenaries and all the jobs you can get as mercenaries and the things you do and all that.**_

_**At my school, Lawndale High School, in Lawndale, we have people coming to tell all the girls about getting jobs as fashion models. It's not fair! If they can come here and talk about jobs for girls then it should be allowed for somebody to come and talk about jobs for men and the things men can do. Like being mercenaries! It would be so cool if a real general like you could come to our school and talk about how we can be mercenaries and what mercenaries do and all that, like in your cool magazine. Some of the seniors are already 18 years old and they could be mercenaries and even some of the juniors and sophomores and even freshmen could be ready to hear about being mercenaries and how cool it is. I show your magazine to some of my friends at school and they think it's great too.**_

_**Those fashion model people only came to our school because some girl wrote to them and asked them to come, so I decided I should write to you just the same way and ask you to come to Lawndale High School and tell everybody about being mercenaries. And also I think the fashion model people gave some money to the principal for the school or something, but you could do that too I think.**_

_**So I think you should write to our principal and also to all the people on the PTA and the school board and the superintendent or whatever, because our principal is a woman and I don't think it's fair if she only does things for girls like bringing in those fashion model people and nothing for men and maybe you should say that in your letter.**_

_**Thank you very much for reading my letter and I think it would be great and really cool if you could come to my school, Lawndale High School (in Lawndale).**_

_**Yours truly**_

* * *

><p><em>That's probably about the right tone. Now all I have to do is put in some spelling and punctuation errors to match, and then I can make a 'fair copy' with a smudged illegible signature—and then we'll see …<em>

To his utter (but sedulously concealed) delight, Sonny did indeed see: all over the television news, which he watched with the rest of his family. Somebody at the PTA or the school board had leaked to the media a letter from 'General' Conroy. Somebody who didn't have much time for Principal Li—that narrowed it down to human beings. Li had issued a prepared statement insisting that there had been no impropriety, that she had not encouraged and would not support mercenary recruiters, that everything she had done was strictly in accordance with policy, that the school had received money which was earmarked for normal capital improvements, and that, 'in view of developments', Lawndale High School had terminated all involvement in any activities related to the potential recruitment of students for employment except for the routine jobs fair. After that she had refused to talk to reporters, who had turned elsewhere for leads. They had learned about the talk of bulletproof skylights for the swimming pool, which they clearly didn't believe were a normal school security precaution. Sonny's parents didn't want to, either.

'Sonny, what do you think?' his mother said. 'Is that really what your principal wanted the money for?'

'A school principal would have to have near-psychotic levels of obsession with security to make bulletproof skylights a priority …', Sonny began.

'Right!' said his father.

'… so I'm inclined to believe the story', Sonny concluded.

His mother was fazed. 'I don't like thinking that the school principal could be so … so …', she said.

'Crazy?' said Sonny.

'My son's a bright boy!' his father said. 'I think we can trust his judgement!'

The television journalists had talked to Conroy and to Romonica and Claude as well. Conroy seemed delighted to have anybody listening to him, confirming Sonny's judgement of him. His judgement of Romonica and Claude was also confirmed: their operation struck him as looking as dubious as Conroy's, although he still couldn't figure out the exact details of the scam. The reporters were curious about the mysterious Lawndale student whose letter had brought Conroy's attention, but Sonny was confident that he had covered his tracks. Nobody except Jane even knew about his former collection of mercenary magazines, which he had regretfully disposed of as soon as he'd sent the letter to Conroy. The reporters had managed to trace Brittany as the person whose letter had been the very first step in the whole affair, and she was obviously thrilled by the attention, which seemed to make up for her disappointment at not being considered 'model material'.

Nothing made up for Quinn's disappointment. She had been convinced that she was on the verge of a breakthrough modelling contract, and she was bright enough to see Romonica and Claude receding further into the distance with every minute the media fuss continued. Sonny couldn't decide whether his _Schadenfreude _was diluted or enhanced by the consideration that what he had really done for Quinn was the favour of guarding her against being scammed.

A few days later Jane said to him, 'Wasn't that "General" Conroy the one who was advertising in the mercenary magazine you showed me?'

'I threw away all those magazines', said Sonny. 'I got to thinking: what if there were a bomb threat at the school?'

'You incurable romantic.'

'You say that because you're only thinking of the good side. I'd be the obvious first suspect, and it wouldn't help my cause if a search discovered publications like that in my possession.'

Like all the best excuses, it was true as far as it went.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'This Year's Model' by Laura Kightlinger and Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	7. Surgical Strike

**Not So Different**

_**7. Surgical Strike**_

Sonny wondered idly what Ms Barch's most frequent remark in class had been before it was 'Shut up, Sonny'. He suspected it might have been either 'Shut up, Chuck' (surely no teacher, not even Barch, would call him 'Upchuck'—at least, not in class?) or 'Shut up, Mack'. 'Mack' was Michael Mackenzie, Jodie Landon's boyfriend and (along with Upchuck) among the most academically capable students in the tenth grade after Sonny himself and Jodie. Ms Barch hated male students when they confirmed her prejudices about the worthlessness of their whole sex (as Upchuck did), but she also hated them when they challenged those prejudices (as Mack did). Sonny was used to having teachers hate him for knowing more than they did and making it brutally obvious, but Barch plainly wouldn't have resented it in the same way if he'd been a girl. It had taken her no more time to get his measure than it had for him to get hers, and now she regularly punctuated classes with admonitions for him to shut up, whether he'd said anything or not. Sonny was also used to no-win situations. It seemed Mack wasn't. He still looked surprised when Barch told him to shut up when he hadn't said anything. Just by being in the class Sonny had done something worthwhile for his fellow students, taking some of the heat off Mack—and Upchuck, and Kevin, and every other male in the class. He still wasn't sure how he felt about it.

He knew how he felt about Ms Barch, though. Her class was the only one in which he could not afford to work on tasks assigned for other classes. The rebukes he received when she detected him only tickled his conceit, but having his work confiscated and destroyed irked him. Just as importantly, he resented the prospect of seeing his grades brought down by Barch's gender-based sliding scale. Didn't the other male students feel the same way? Didn't their parents? What was the appropriate response to the situation? He spent a large part of his time in Ms Barch's class mulling over the matter. It was becoming more urgent now, as Barch was about to allocate the students to groups of two to work on a major lab project. First, though, she was talking about the concept of 'reinforcement', with which the exercise was apparently supposed to deal. Now she was asking for somebody to give an example. She wouldn't ask Sonny, because he'd give a better answer than she could come up with herself.

'Kevin?'

Kevin stammered.

'Shut up, Kevin.' Barch turned her attention to Jodie. Sonny didn't bother to take in the details of her response. It would be clear and accurate, even incisive, but not as imaginative as an answer Sonny could have given—not as rigorous, either, but then Barch's own understanding was not as rigorous as Sonny's.

When Jodie had finished, Barch said, 'What a pleasure it is to have such a capable student in the class … unlike' (and her gaze swivelled for a moment to Kevin, and then to Sonny, and then back to Jodie) 'some of the lesser beings.' She looked back at Kevin. 'Kevin, you will be partnered with Jodie on the lab project.'

Brittany squeaked as Barch continued, 'You two will design a maze, and condition Kevin—I mean, condition a mouse using positive or negative reinforcement.'

Brittany protested that she and Kevin had never been separated on a lab project before. 'What'll we do?'

_Pass? _Sonny said to himself. Then Barch assigned him to be Brittany's partner. _Or maybe not? _Sonny thought. Barch might prefer female students, but she didn't prefer them all equally, and Brittany wasn't the independent type who would win her favour. Sonny wondered whether a cheerleader type like Brittany had been implicated in Ms Barch's husband's abandonment of her. The look Barch gave him was not encouraging.

'Shut up, Sonny!' she said.

* * *

><p>Jane heard from Sonny about his project for Barch's class at lunchtime. She remarked that he might be the only male in the class who would prefer not to be partnered with Brittany.<p>

'I don't think that's fair', he said. 'Mack's in my class, for example. He's faithful to Jodie, and even if he isn't, he cares about academic results. And he believes in the rules, and in the system. If he were partnered with Brittany he'd try to get an actual collaboration going, and get frustrated. I'm happier doing all the work myself anyway, and I don't care that much if Brittany gets a free ride this time.'

While Jane was still thinking about this, Brittany approached their table.

'This is about our lab project, right?' Sonny said. 'Obviously there's no other reason for you to come near our table.'

Brittany gave an affirmative squeak.

'Remember when I helped you in art, and I explained to you how it wasn't a good idea for us to spend time together because of Kevin?'

'But Kevin's partnered with Jodie!'

'I know, but I still think the best plan is for me to start on the project, and I'll let you know when it's your turn to help.'

'Okay!' said Brittany. 'Thanks, Sonny!'

As Brittany walked away, Jane said, 'You're thinking that turn will never come, aren't you?'

'Let me put it like this. If my parents notice a strange smell from my room and break down the door to find that I've been dead for three days, I'm trusting you to let Brittany know that her turn to work on our lab project has come.'

Jane raised an eyebrow, and a corner of her mouth. 'I think you're overlooking something.'

'What?'

'Well, at the end of the project there'll be a class presentation, right?'

Sonny nodded.

'Now', Jane said, 'out of the two of you, who do you think Barch will want to hear from in the class presentation?'

Jane watched Sonny's nearly impassive face. It was like watching the reels spin on a slot machine. She had enough practice now to recognise the moment when the spinning stopped, although she still couldn't tell what payout had come up.

'You know', Jane said, 'there's a reason why I'm not taking any of Barch's classes this year. Or ever again, if I can help it.'

'Well, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I can still build the maze and train the mouse without Brittany, and there's still Kevin's response to any contact between me and Brittany to consider. I may end up having to train her as well as the mouse, but I'm going to put it off as long as possible. The closer to presentation time I implant any knowledge into her brain, the less strain on her memory retaining it. And that way I can minimise the contact and hence any possible irritation of Kevin.'

'Nobody else has your priorities', Jane said. 'Not Mack, not anybody.'

For a moment Sonny looked puzzled, almost as if she'd disappointed him.

* * *

><p>Sonny heard his father answering the door. A moment later he came into the garage, where Sonny was working on the lab project.<p>

'There's a blonde here to see you, sport, and I think she's a looker!'

Sonny indulged himself in a wince, knowing his father wouldn't notice. 'Does she look like a cheerleader?'

'A cheerleader, too! Way to go, sport! I knew my boy had it in him!'

'Dad, that's Brittany. She's the dimwitted millstone that my teacher foisted on me as a deadweight partner for this lab project.' Sonny rebuked himself silently for trying to explain something to his father. There was no reason to deny the man his vicarious pleasure. 'I suppose if she's here she might as well come and see what I've been doing.'

Sonny's father winked confidentially at him and showed Brittany in. She looked like a bad parody of somebody working undercover, in trenchcoat, dark glasses, and broad-brimmed hat.

'Have fun, you two!' said Jake. 'I'll leave you to it! I mean, your project! Uh, good luck with it!'

When his father was gone, Sonny looked at Brittany.

'Thanks for your interest, Brittany', he lied. 'The project is progressing according to schedule, and I'll call on you at the appropriate time. Now, have a good evening.' He started trying to usher her out, while avoiding any possibility of accidental physical contact.

Brittany squeaked. 'Listen, Sonny! I have to have somewhere to hide!'

'To hide?'

'From Upchuck!'

'I thought Upchuck was partnered with Mack?'

Brittany squeaked again. 'This isn't about the lab project. Upchuck … Upchuck has this photograph …' She stuttered to a halt.

'If this is a secret of yours, Brittany, I don't want to hear about it. And if Upchuck is involved, I have _less _than no interest.'

'But I need help!'

'I'm your lab partner because Ms Barch put us together.' Sonny folded his arms. 'And that's _it_, Brittany.'

'But that means I have to work on the project with you! That's what I told Upchuck! Because he … I mean … if I don't … I mean … I won't be able to do my part if … if you don't help me … so you have to!'

Sonny knew that Jane was right and that at some point he would have to prep Brittany to deal with questions from Barch. He decided that he would have to suffer through Brittany's explanation.

'So what has Upchuck been doing and what difference does it make?' he said.

Brittany hesitated. 'You won't say anything to Kevvy?' Sonny looked at her. 'Or anybody else?' she went on. Sonny went on looking at her. Brittany took off her dark glasses and her voice dropped slightly. 'You never do talk with anybody at school, do you? Apart from Jane.'

'I can't help you if you don't explain the problem', Sonny said. When Brittany still hesitated he lowered his voice too. 'Your secret is safe with me. So tell me about this photograph.'

In a tiny voice, and noticeably lower than her usual bat sonar, Brittany said, 'It really shouldn't count, because Kevin and I were broken up that week.'

'Which week?'

'The week that despicable Upchuck took the photograph, of course!' Brittany was already beginning to rebound.

Sonny made the obvious deduction, and tried to hurry the story along. 'So this was a photograph of you doing something that you wouldn't have been doing if you and Kevin hadn't been broken up … which means it involves somebody else, right?'

Now that she was started, Brittany was eager to get the story over with. 'Sam Stack', she said.

Sonny waited for further explanation, but Brittany just looked shamefaced until he said, 'Who is Sam Stack?'

Brittany raised her eyebrows. 'He's the quarterback for Oakwood, Lawndale's biggest rivals. And we were in his car. In the back seat. And he sort of didn't have his shirt on. And …'

'Thanks, that's enough. More than enough, really. And Upchuck took a photograph of this and he's blackmailing you, and that's why you're trying to hide from him and using the lab project as an alibi? What's he getting you to do?'

'Oh, uh … nothing like … I mean, you know … not …' Brittany paused and shuddered. 'He'd be too scared of my Kevvy for anything like that. He's just getting me to do errands, like going to the shops for him, or cleaning and tidying, sorting and arranging his disgusting collections of …

Sonny cut her off. 'Again, more than enough. So you told him that you couldn't do anything for him this evening because you had to come and work on the lab project with me?'

'I know you said you'd tell me when it was my turn to work on the project, but I have to hide from Upchuck! And I came in disguise so Upchuck wouldn't know it was me coming here! And Kevin won't know that I'm here either … or anybody else …'

'Except that you told Upchuck you were coming here, because that was your alibi, and if he saw you coming here and tells Kevin that you were coming here in disguise, everything will be just ginger-peachy. And once Upchuck's got as much as he feels like from you he may rat you out to Kevin just for spite. How did you expect the blackmail to end?'

Brittany just looked at Sonny. Sonny dropped the question. If Brittany had a clue, she wouldn't be asking him for help in the first place. But it sounded as if he would have to help Brittany in order to rescue himself.

'What you have to do', he said, 'is get your story in with Kevin first.'

'My story?' said Brittany. 'You mean, about how we were broken up that week?'

Sonny reflected that getting anything into Brittany's head—and he would have to for the class presentation—ranked only as easier than getting something into Kevin's head. Still, Kevin could normally be expected to be more receptive to Brittany than to Upchuck so long as the approach came from a suitable angle.

'No, not that story', he said. 'I've got a story for you to tell him.'

'You mean, lie to Kevvy?'

'I don't think telling the truth is such a good plan. What we have to do is make Kevin see Upchuck as the villain. The bad guy. The person who's done something wrong. And you as a victim who didn't do anything wrong. Upchuck did something wrong to you. That's … mostly true. Upchuck has been blackmailing you. That's despicable.'

'It is!'

'It makes you angry', Sonny continued. 'At Upchuck. What we want is for Kevin to think it's despicable, and for him to get angry at Upchuck, and be on your side. Which is mostly where he wants to be, so it shouldn't be too hard. Imagine if Upchuck were blackmailing Kevin and making Kevin run errands for him. How would you feel?'

'Does Upchuck have photos of Kevin in the back seat of a car with some Oakwood cheerleader?'

'No, Brittany, this is just hyp—I mean, imaginary. Imagine that Upchuck is playing some kind of trick on Kevin to make him run errands for him like a slave, even though Kevin is completely innocent. How would you feel?'

Brittany clenched her fists and bristled. 'Oooh, I'd be so angry!'

'Exactly. And our plan has to be to make Kevin feel the same way—angry at Upchuck, not at you. So we need to give him a reason not to pay any attention to the photograph, even if Upchuck shows it to him. That shouldn't be too hard. You _want _to believe each other, don't you? He's your "Kevvy" and you're his "babe", right?'

'But we were broken up that week …'

'Okay, but most of the time you want to believe each other?' Sonny already knew that Brittany's ideas about fidelity … fluctuated. All the more reason to try to fix her thoughts and feelings on Kevin rather than have them floating around loose where they might get snagged on himself.

Brittany nodded hesitantly. 'It sounds right when you say it. Is it because you're a brain? How do you think of all this stuff, Sonny?'

_Instantaneously, usually. Thinking of this stuff is easy. Getting it across to you, that's the hard part. There should be a merit badge I could earn. Okay, baby steps …_

'Never mind about me. Have you ever heard of image manipulation?' Brittany twirled a lock of hair around her fingers and looked blank. Sonny tried again. 'Faking photographs?' Brittany nodded hesitantly. 'So here's the story. Upchuck was creeping around, spying on you and taking photographs—anybody would believe that, right?'

'It's true!'

'Well, there's nothing necessarily wrong with using truth in the story. When it works for you, nothing beats it. How did Upchuck get that photograph, anyway? Telephoto lens?'

'Yes, he forgot to take it off his camera', said Brittany. Sonny stared at her, suppressing the unhelpful desire to insert a sarcastic remark. 'Or that's what he said!' she burst out.

'Let's get back to our story. Upchuck got a photograph of you. That's not your fault. It sounds just like Upchuck. And it should already make Kevin mad that Upchuck was sneaking around and spying on you. And then Upchuck faked the photograph to make it look like Sam Stack was there with you.' Sonny paused. 'When he wasn't really. According to our story. The story which you are going to tell to Kevin. Which goes on to the part where Upchuck blackmails you. As I already told you. The part that's going to make Kevin even angrier. But at Upchuck.'

'It's such a complicated story … I still think it would sound better if a brain like you told it.'

'I'm a guy, Brittany. We don't want me involved in anything between you and Kevin. Kevin might wonder why you had talked to me about this, and that wouldn't help. But you've given me an idea. You should be the one to tell Kevin, because you're his "babe", and you're the one who's angry at Upchuck, and you should use your anger at Upchuck to make Kevin angry at Upchuck. But you could do it _with _somebody else, somebody else who's a girl so that Kevin will trust her with you, somebody else who knows a lot about photography and pictures and can sound good explaining that part of the story.'

'You really are a brain, Sonny!'

_Home stretch_, thought Sonny. 'Brittany, you say that almost as if you think it's a compliment. Right, so I'll speak with Jane tomorrow …'

'Jane?'

'Didn't I say a girl who knows a lot about photography and pictures? I'll explain the story to her and then she can get together with you and arrange for you both to talk to Kevin and tell him the story, about how Upchuck has been spying on you and using a fake photograph to blackmail you and make you run errands for him, and how angry it makes you. You can say that you didn't know how Upchuck could get a photograph of you with Sam Stack when you were never with Sam Stack … that's the story, remember? … and you talked to Jane because she knows about photography and she told you that photographs could be faked.'

Brittany nodded enthusiastically. 'It will be good if Jane can explain to Kevin about how you can fake photographs, because I might not be able to do that part.'

_If Jane can explain technical details to _Kevin_, it'll be more than 'good' and more than worth a merit badge, it'll be the equivalent of making the blind see and the lame run. But Brittany doesn't need to hear from me about Kevin right now. _'The only other thing is how we get Jane to agree to help.'

'But she's your friend, isn't she? Won't she want to help you?'

_If Jane has to suffer the way I've just been suffering, she deserves some sort of payoff. _'Just to be on the safe side, can I tell her that you'll give her a br—I mean, do a favour for her because she's doing a favour for you?'

'Sure, that sounds fair. Say, I can invite her to my next party the way I invited her with you that other time!'

'I suppose that might work. But it wouldn't hurt if you were prepared to offer cash.'

Before Brittany could respond, they heard from outdoors the unmistakable voice of Upchuck calling 'Ohh, Brittany!'

'Damn! Brittany, you have to get out of here right now and not let Upchuck know anything about what we're planning! Tell him we've finished working on the science project for tonight and then go and run whatever errand he's come after you for! It's only for one more night, because tomorrow I'll talk to Jane and tell her to talk to you and then you can both talk to Kevin and your problem will be fixed! Now, Brittany! Trust me! Trust my brain! Go!'

* * *

><p>Jane gave Sonny a full debriefing over pizza.<p>

'The Morgendorffer master manipulation went like clockwork. It was an honour and a pleasure to be part of executing your plan. And speaking of executing, I wouldn't want to be Upchuck when Kevin catches up with him. You know that goofy look Kevin wears?'

'The smile of the happy idiot?'

'Exactly. Well, I got to see it go away. I just hope I can capture something of the experience in a picture or something. That alone was worth the price of admission. Oh, and speaking of price, it was thoughtful of you to include in your calculations a bribe from Brittany to me …'

Sonny interjected. 'Don't call it a bribe. That wouldn't fit with Brittany's sunny view of the world. I'm saving the pleasure of clouding her sky for a time when we're not assigned to a lab project together. It's a friendly exchange of favours. And getting _her_ to exchange a favour with you meant _I_ didn't have to do it.'

'Well, speaking of bribes or speaking of friendly exchange of favours, there's too much accounting between you and me. I've done you favours, you've done me favours, I've bought you pizza, you've bought me pizza, by this stage your credit's good with me. I suggest you let me run a tab with you and I'll let you run a tab with me. We can reckon it up at the end of the year or something and see if there's a balance to settle.'

'Deal.' Sonny looked at his watch. 'Sorry, but I have to go. Brittany's coming over tonight so I can train her for our presentation in Barch's class tomorrow. If we hadn't just made that deal, I'd say I owed you one for tipping me off to that requirement. One thing I've learned from our little experiment with human behaviour is that I can train Brittany.'

'Yeah, you've done animal psychology and human psychology. Too bad you can't get extra credit.'

'Barch', said Sonny flatly. 'I'll tell you how that went when I come over tomorrow evening to pose for you.'

But when Jane opened the door for Sonny the next evening, he was in no condition to sit for a portrait. She got him inside and gave him first aid for his nosebleed.

'You're good at this', Sonny said. 'I've had some experience over the years, and you're good at this.'

'I picked up some experience babysitting for my sister Summer's kids', said Jane. 'Need any other first aid?'

'No, the rest just needs time. There's nothing serious, and I speak from experience again. Sorry I can't pose for you tonight. Will you take a raincheck?'

'Remember yesterday we agreed on a credit arrangement? And now that we've taken care of the immediate medical emergency, why are we talking about anything except what the hell happened?'

Sonny fell silent.

'Clamming up, hey? I don't need you to tell me you got beaten up, that's obvious, even if you hadn't told me your history … wait a minute, I think I get it.' Jane pointed a finger at Sonny. 'You'll be practical about accepting first aid, but you're not going to turn into a person who comes running to have your booboo kissed to make it all better? Don't worry, I've got no plans to kiss your booboo.'

'I can't begin to tell you how relieved I am at that news.'

'But you'd better begin to tell me some other stuff. Remember, if you're still Sonny Morgendorffer, I'm still Jane Lane, and Jane Lane's inquisitive. Your secrets are safe with me if you talk, but if you don't talk you'll never be safe from my persistent badgering. And that's without mentioning the possibilities for torture opened up by your current physical condition.'

Once again Jane watched the slot machine spin. Then Sonny began without preamble, 'Upchuck did take a beating from Kevin yesterday, but the little weasel's smart. He figured out that I must have had something to do with siccing Kevin on to him, and he deflected Kevin back on to me. He knew that Brittany had come round to my place in that ridiculously obvious disguise of hers—she wore it again last night, I'm afraid, and Upchuck had brought Kevin with him and kept my house under observation. He told Kevin there'd be no reason for Brittany to come to see me in disguise if all we were doing was working on a lab project. He managed to direct all the blame on me, and so tonight after I left home Kevin got hold of me and showed me what happens to any other guy who interferes with his "babe". Then, when he'd left me, Upchuck moved in and took advantage of my condition to show me what happens to anybody who gets him in trouble. If you're curious, I think it's over two years since I took two beatings in the same day. But I've had worse. Too stiff and sore for modelling work, no more than that, apart from the nose, and that's okay now.'

'Not that you're not welcome here, but why didn't you just go home?'

'I said I'd be here and I wasn't going to let those two stop me. Plus, they would have made a bad fuss at home and I gambled that you wouldn't so much. _And _I want to enlist you in a plot I've brewed up, since you liked being in the other one so much.'

Jane sat back and cocked her head. 'Takes a licking, keeps on ticking.'

Sonny nodded. 'I like that.'

'So who's the target now? Kevin, or Upchuck, or both?'

'First you sound like you're getting it, then not. Why would I want to do anything to either of them now? How would that make any difference?'

Jane paused. 'Well, it would mean they weren't getting away with … what they did …' She gestured at Sonny instead of finishing the sentence. She felt he didn't want his beating referred to any more.

'I'm telling you that's nothing. And if it's nothing, then they're not getting away with anything, are they?'

'Okay', said Jane. 'I'm going to just listen now and not talk.'

Without preamble, Sonny changed the subject. 'At school today we had the presentations of the lab projects in Barch's class. Brittany did as well as could be expected and better than I'd hoped. I think Barch guessed how I'd coached her, and I don't think she liked it. Anyway, she gave us a B minus.' Sonny paused and Jane waited until he went on. 'Maybe our project didn't deserve a better mark than Jodie's, but it didn't deserve a worse one, and she got an A.'

'Kevin got an A?' Jane said. 'Sorry, I couldn't help interrupting.'

'That's okay. No, Kevin got a D.'

'So Jodie got an A and Kevin got a D for the same project?'

Sonny nodded. 'So I think my plan is amply justified—and has excellent prospects. You're going to help me, if you will'—Jane nodded—'on a little "extra credit" mathematics project.'

'But how can _I _help _you _and in math, of all subjects? We're not even in the same class.'

'That's part of the reason I want your help. I'm going to need data for the project that I can only get through a teacher. Now if I go to my teacher she'll want to know what I want the data for and what I'm going to do with it and all about the project. But if you go to your teacher and say you want the data for your part of an extra credit project you're doing in partnership with a student from a more advanced class, then he'll be pleased that you're extending yourself and he'll probably assume that my teacher already knows all about it. My reputation will probably have reached him and that might help too. Then your eye for design will help a lot. I want to present the findings in graphs or charts, and I want you to do that part, because I want them to jump off the page and grab the reader by the throat. And it'll add credibility if the final result is presented as the joint work of a female student and a male student.'

'You're almost making it sound as if math could be fun, which is scary. But you're still not telling me what the point is.'

To Jane's surprise, Sonny's eyes danced. 'I think when you draw up the results you should be able to see that for yourself.'

* * *

><p>Sonny looked over Jane's graphical presentation. 'This is perfect. I could never have done this myself.'<p>

Jane reread the project title aloud. '_Gender Distribution of Grades at Lawndale High School_'

'And now', said Sonny, 'tell me what you see: what the readers will see.'

'Sometimes girls get slightly higher marks; sometimes boys get slightly higher marks. Girls tend to do a little better in some subjects, boys in others. And then there's this one group of classes, all science classes but not all of the science classes, where there's a strange gap between most of the girls' grades and most of the boys' grades that's like nothing else.'

'And what makes that group of classes different from all the rest?'

'They're one teacher's classes, but because we got anonymous data we can't prove it's Barch.'

Sonny shook his head. 'We don't want to. If we accuse her directly, we might make our audience, or some of it, reflexively take up a defensive stance. If we leave things open, the audience is going to want to know the identity of the relevant teacher, which puts them in hunting mode with our target in the crosshairs. Next step is to get copies made for distribution to Principal Li, the superintendent, the school board, the PTA, and I think the student council as well.'

'What do you expect the student council to do?'

'It's Li I'm expecting to do something. Whatever her faults, I rely on her to be quick off the mark when she sees any threat to her precious _Lawndale High_', said Sonny, imitating the school principal's breathily emphatic mode of speech. 'The distribution list will go on every copy, but it's really mostly addressed to her. It's to make sure she does see a threat, something she can't just brush under the carpet. You remember that business recently with the self-styled "General" from _Mercenary Times_?' Jane nodded, and gave Sonny a meaning look, which he ignored as he continued. 'Somebody at the school board or the PTA or somewhere leaked to the media and the publicity was bad, so Li is sure to be hypersensitive and determined to smother any new embarrassing media stories as quickly as possible, and she'll see the student council as another possible channel for a leak. I'm intrigued to see exactly what she'll do.'

'Why don't you send it out to the media yourself?' asked Jane.

'Harder to offer justification if Li asks us questions. Which, if she does, I suggest you leave to me if you can.'

Sonny's advice came back to Jane later when she heard Ms Li's voice over the school's public address system: 'Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior, and Jane Lane, please report to the principal's office immediately.' As curious gazes turned to them, Jane worked hard to look as blank as Sonny. Before they went into the principal's office Sonny gave her a brief stare, which she took as a reminder of his advice. Inside, Li held up a copy of their report and asked them to explain it.

Sonny replied instantly. 'That's a math project that Jane and I collaborated on.'

'I understand you two aren't even in the same math class.'

'That's right', said Sonny blithely. 'I thought it might be educationally beneficial for Jane to get some experience working with a student from a more advanced class.'

'And your teacher, Mr Morgendorffer, tells me that she knew nothing about this project.'

'You've shown it to her?' said Sonny, voice and face contradicting the inquisitiveness of the words. 'What did she say about the math?'

'That's not the point!' snapped Li.

'I'm sorry. Of course … you … wouldn't be interested in what a math teacher has to say about a math project.'

'What interests me, Mr Morgendorffer, is that you say this is a purely educational project, but _you_ have not made your report to your professional educator, your mathematics teacher, while you have sent it to many other people.'

'When we saw the results, we did consider that it should be of interest to anybody concerned with the reputation of'—Sonny paused to inhale deeply—'_Lawndale High_. If you look at the second-last page you'll see that there's a detailed discussion of the statistical significance of the results.'

'I take it you are referring to the results for students in the classes of one particular teacher', said Li. 'You don't mention who that teacher is.'

'The section on methodology explains how the data were provided to us in a strictly anonymous form so as not to invade the privacy of any individual student _or _teacher. That was a basic consideration of research ethics. I'm sure I don't have to waste time talking to you about considerations of ethics', said Sonny. Jane could detect no open hint of double meaning.

The principal turned her attention to Jane. 'Ms Lane, you haven't had anything to say about this, but I understand that it was you who got the raw data, through _your_ mathematics teacher.'

'Yes', said Jane. 'I've learned a lot through working on this project with Sonny, including about research ethics, and also about the proper reporting of results.' She was careful not to turn her head, but from the corner of her eye, she could sense that Sonny approved.

Li began again. 'So you were both concerned with', and she intoned reverently, 'the reputation of Lawndale High; and', she continued, 'neither of you thought it proper to report the results directly to the media. We had some unfortunate problems recently with those scandalous and completely unjustified allegations about improper recruitment of students for employment, and it didn't help that one of your classmates talked to reporters.'

'I don't want to talk with reporters', Sonny said. 'I don't really like talking with anybody.'

'And what about you, Ms Lane?' said Li.

'Why would any reporters want to talk with me? Sonny understands the math better than I do.'

Sonny said, 'I'm sure we're all looking forward to the day when the primetime news wants to spend time interviewing a tenth-grader about tests for statistical significance. I know I am.'

'Very well', Li said. 'You can return to your classes now. Mr Morgendorffer, you're in Ms Barch's class at the moment? You'll have missed the announcement there. Ms Barch is taking some personal time, so we're making alternative arrangements for all her classes.'

'No doubt all her students will battle through the heartbreak until she returns.'

Li indicated that the discussion was at an end. 'I'm hoping to be able to make an announcement about longer term arrangements very soon. You might want to be on the alert for that announcement.' She gestured politely and Jane and Sonny left her office to make their way to their respective classes.

Before they separated, Sonny said to Jane, 'Notice all the exultant students celebrating in the corridors?'

'Ingratitude. I'm happy. Isn't that enough for you?'

'It's the absolute most I can endure, since you ask.'

A few days later the promised announcement was made. Ms Barch was going to be working on a special project for the Board of Education and a new teacher would be taking over all her classes. Sonny explained to Jane that this was an example of the 'lateral arabesque'. Jane congratulated Sonny.

'I don't know', said Sonny. 'I may have helped Kevin. I may have helped Upchuck.'

'Well', said Jane, 'remember: takes a licking, keeps on ticking!'

'Thanks', Sonny said.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'The Lab Brat' by Peggy Nicoll<strong>_


	8. Wisdom Of The Ages

**Not So Different**

_**8. Wisdom Of The Ages**_

'Hey, there's Quinn with one of her many admirers', said Jane.

'She's well liked by classmates of both sexes', Sonny said, 'and yet, strangely, she turns my stomach.'

As they neared Quinn and the hapless youth she was talking with, Sonny slowed to deliver a message.

'Quinn, some guy named Schuyler was looking for you.'

'Oh, no! He figured out you're my brother?'

'He may have thought I was a foreign exchange student who'd been billeted with you. Or a visiting foreign cousin, or something. He asked me how I liked America so far.'

'People are so weird!'

'And in so many different ways.' Sonny started to walk off. 'Some, for example, are weirdly self-centred and deceitful.'

Jane excused herself and walked on with Sonny. After a minute, she said, 'That was probably Schuyler Feldman you were talking about.'

Sonny didn't react.

Jane grinned. 'You really don't care about the world of popularity, do you? Schuyler Feldman's kind of a male equivalent of Quinn. Good-looking, fashionable, stylish, popular, all the girls want to date him—almost all, anyway. Come to think of it, did you find that _he_ turned your stomach?'

'So, let me see. That poor sap Quinn's talking to is the type she would never date. She was just trying to extract some benefit from him. But now that he knows he's in competition with Schuyler Feldman, he'll quit the field, leaving Quinn empty-handed?'

'Right. Your day hasn't been entirely wasted.'

Sonny found out that Friday what the benefit was that Quinn had been looking for: somebody to take over her Saturday night babysitting engagement so that she could go on her date with Schuyler Feldman. He found out because in desperation she appealed to him. He reminded her that he hadn't liked kids even when he was a kid. She offered him a two-dollar-an-hour bonus on top of the six dollars an hour the parents were offering. He argued that even if she were paying him it would still technically count as a favour from him to her, 'and that simply cannot be'.

Their mother unintentionally came to Quinn's rescue. She was expecting both Sonny and Quinn to be present on Saturday when the Morgendorffers hosted their couples workshop for 'focus on teens' night. Quinn had handy some ammunition supplied by the opposition. She'd made a date for that Saturday night, and hadn't her mother told her that a commitment's a commitment? Her mother sighed, but she had said that. She turned on Sonny. What could he do? He claimed a prior commitment of his own. The incredulity of his mother and his sister was exceeded only by his own. He turned his head so they wouldn't see his face disintegrate as he concentrated his attention on maintaining a monotone.

'I'm babysitting.'

As Sonny was, accordingly, about to leave the house on Saturday evening, his father asked him where he was going on couples therapy night. Apparently the news that Sonny was going babysitting for the Guptys hadn't filtered through to him. When Sonny explained, his father said, 'Babysitting? But isn't Quinn the babysitter? Is that really your sort of thing?'

_Oh no_, thought Sonny. _One of _those _conversations._

'You think I'd take more naturally to lawnmowing, yard work, that sort of thing? But isn't restricting me to things like that part of the patriarchy's stereotyping?'

Jake stammered. 'Well, sure … but … you know … I'm a man, and you're my only son and …'

'I do understand, Dad', Sonny said. 'Of course you want me to be A Man and that's good. But there's a difference between A Man and The Man, isn't that right? I learned that from watching you', he lied. 'You've been a model for me.'

'Hey thanks, ace', said Jake. 'You know, if my son appreciates me, it's all been worth it. Not like my old man. No, he never earned his son's appreciation! Let me tell you …'

'I'm sorry, Dad, but I don't want to be late for this job. A Man makes good on his commitments, right? And I'm going to make good on this one the way you would. I'm going to try my best to give these kids an example of how somebody can be nurturing _and _completely masculine', Sonny lied again.

'That's right!' said Jake. 'Say, boys or girls?'

'One of each, I think', said Sonny, putting his hand on the doorknob.

'Well, that's perfect', said Jake. 'Those kids can really learn something from my boy.' After a moment he grumbled, 'Makes me wish _I _had a babysitting job. Better than couples therapy night. Can't show those wimps any masculinity. Too freaking sensitive.'

'Hang in there, Dad. I'm sure you'll meet some insensitive couples. Now I really have to go.'

As Sonny walked to the Guptys', he felt the same sinking feeling inside that had been recurring ever since he accepted the job. He kept thinking about the tribulations he and Quinn had inflicted on a sequence of babysitters. One of his earliest memories was of Quinn, still a baby, being messily uncooperative with the babysitter's efforts to feed her and of himself asking with a toddler's incessancy when it would be time for Quinn's punishment. Then there was the period when Quinn was of an age to resort to violence and he had not yet grown out of it (or had it beaten out of him, whichever it was). There had been a seemingly endless series of briefly vicious scuffles on the floor, with Quinn repeatedly yelling 'Brain!' and himself repeatedly yelling 'Brat!', and he remembered at least one of those occasions with a despairing babysitter standing helplessly by. Most vivid was his memory of their last babysitter before they'd outgrown them, a girl possibly the same age he was now, who'd come with her boyfriend. Sonny, with violent candour (he thought he was old enough to dispense with babysitters but his parents weren't quite ready to leave Quinn alone with him), had told the boyfriend that the girl stuffed her bra, while Quinn had insinuatingly informed the confounded youth, 'I'll be allowed to date in four years.' Sonny still thought of that babysitter every time he heard the word 'scowl'.

He'd only taken on the job as a lesser evil than being the teen at the couples' workshop's 'focus on teens'. Now that he knew his father agreed with his comparative evaluation he felt less sure of it. His insides weren't just sinking, they were—what? lurching? shuddering? churning? 'Churning' was a good word, but even good words were inadequate to distract his mind from its current perturbations.

Then he reached the Guptys, and passed beyond sinking and churning insides. Oh, the sinking was still going on—even lower, if such a thing were possible—and the churning—with even greater turbulence, if such a thing were possible—but now the cumulative effect was such that he felt not just his flesh but his brain crawl. The house itself would not have pushed him over the limit, though he didn't exactly fancy the five exactly identical windows identically trimmed with identical curtains identically tied back and identical ornamental window boxes, although it did look like something out of a children's drawing. But the lawn was covered with a bestiary of ceramic animals and the worst kind of garden gnome holding a sign saying '_The Guptys_' in ornately embellished script. And was that actually a wishing well? And was he starting to hallucinate, or was there really a flag flying at the front door with a smiley-face daisy? As he proceeded down the path he tried desperately to think of words. Cutesy? Yes. Kitsch? Yes. But wasn't there a better word? What was that British word—twee! that was it. Really, all that was missing was … was … he was still groping as the door was opened to his ring. Yes! That was it, a kewpie doll!

'Hi, Mrs Kewpie', he said.

'What?'

'Mrs Gupty!'

'Please, Sonny, call me Lauren. Come on in, we're almost ready.'

_And _I'm _almost entering a fugue state_, Sonny thought, as his memories of being babysat recurred to him. He sat on the sofa waiting to meet the Gupty children in an interior which was the perfect dystopic complement to the exterior which had so jolted him. There was a framed photograph of the children next to him, and the phrase 'look like they came fresh out of a bandbox' floated to the surface of his mind. Then the real things materialised, like the cherubs Sonny always imagined tormenting him in his own version of hell. The parents introduced them and then briefly reviewed their rules for babysitters, which they and Quinn had already explained to him. Sonny wasn't worried by these: the 'worst' that could happen if they decided he had transgressed their rules was that they might refuse to employ him as a babysitter again, and given his feelings about babysitting in the first place he was protected on that front. The Guptys also had a schedule for the evening in fifteen-minute blocks, and Sonny felt much the same way about this. Finally they told him the 'vocabulary word for the night' (_the which for the what now?_) and mentioned the food in the fridge. Then they and the children made their farewells.

The parents departed, Sonny felt strongly that his first priority was to reinforce the fingernail grip he felt he still had on reality. He suggested the children drop their angel act. When they expressed only incomprehension, and an obsessive-compulsive interest in the schedule, he felt his perceptions becoming decisively disjointed. _There's a lot of this experience my brain is simply not going to retain_, he thought. _That's good._

His first effort to restore some contact with normality was to propose a late change to the schedule, adding a slot for television. With chirpy solemnity Tad (the male and younger tyke) explained to Sonny that 'too much TV is bad for you'.

'And how do you know how much is too much?' Sonny said, but they were ready for that one.

'It turns you into a zombie', said Tricia (the female and older moppet), in exactly the same tone as her sibling.

'And what if you already are a zombie?' Sonny said. This remark exposed a lacuna in their programming, and Sonny was able to turn on the television and start clicking the remote, only to suffer another disorienting blow. 'Well, that answers that question', he said. 'You have a television with everything locked out except the weather channel.'

Tricia and Tad, it transpired, were thrilled by the weather channel—until the commercials came on.

'Commercials are bad.'

'Commercials lie.'

Sonny suggested advancing the schedule to snack time, and tried to reassert his own personality by contrarily adding the sardonic remark that this would get them to oral hygiene more quickly, but Tad and Tricia accepted this with their unvarying unquestioning enthusiasm. In a practical sense it made babysitting them easier, but the constant shocks to Sonny's spirit were a high price to pay.

There was a tray in the refrigerator. There were three cups on it. The cups were labelled. They had raisins in them. The two little eager beavers explained to Sonny that raisins were nature's candy, and recited an obviously familiar antiphonal denunciation of sugar. It occurred to Sonny that their faces and voices varied as little as his own deadpan and monotone, possibly even less. Stepford children.

Where was Jane? He needed Jane. She'd said she'd come.

What else had she said? _If they start to drive you nuts …_

Sonny was sure that Jane was thinking of a different kind of psychological pressure, but he did feel on the verge of a dissociative reaction.

They'd finished their raisins. Time to try Jane's advice. No, wait. Flossing first. They were going to love that (no, really, they were going to love that). Was he supposed to floss too, to set them a good example? No, providentially he hadn't eaten any raisins.

And after the flossing we'll play 'cemetery'. Let's hope it works as well as Jane said.

'You have to lie on the floor and pretend you're dead. The first one to move or make a sound loses.'

Sonny hoped that would hold them long enough for him to call Jane.

'If you're still coming, bring junk food.'

'I had to wait for my ride', said Jane. 'Trent just got back from rehearsal. Relax, I'm on my way.'

He heard Tad sneeze and Tricia shout 'I won!' The next thing he heard Tricia say was, 'Hey, sitters aren't allowed to use the phone.'

Hanging up, Sonny said, 'Thanks, I already know that.'

For the first time he saw them disconcerted and began to feel that he might survive the evening after all.

After a pause, Tad said, 'But you'll get in trouble.'

'You mean, if _you_ tell your parents that I used the phone, _you_ will get me in trouble. But why would you want to do that?'

Once again they were stumped for a moment. Then Tricia said, 'Because sitters aren't allowed to use the phone.'

'Do you tell your parents when Quinn uses the phone?'

'Quinn's allowed', said Tad.

'Because she has to tell her grandmother to take her pill', said Tricia.

'What if I told you that it's my turn to do that tonight?'

'You didn't say that before!'

'No, I didn't, did I?'

Now they were dumbstruck. Tad started to cry and Tricia yelled, 'You're mean!'

Now that he was reassured he wasn't losing his touch, Sonny was resigned to easing off again. 'Would you like to play "cemetery" again?'

'Yay!'

Tricia won four rounds of 'cemetery' in a row because Tad sneezed every time. Sonny figured he must be reacting to something in the carpet. Both children kept cheering just as enthusiastically, but Sonny was getting more and more jittery and decided it was time to shift gears again.

'Would you like to try another game?'

'Yay!'

'Do you know how to play "hide and seek"?'

'Yay!'

'Well, why don't the two of you go and hide somewhere in the house and I'll wait here and count?'

'Yay!'

'Wu-un … too-oo … three-ee … faw-aw … fie-ive … si-ix …' … _right_, thought Sonny, _they should be well gone by now_. He sat back and pulled a paperback out of his pocket. _And in a strictly literal sense I told them no lies—it was all questions …_

He still wasn't entirely at ease—he wouldn't be till he left the house—but he had a relatively satisfactory eight minutes of reading, at the end of which the doorbell rang.

'I don't often say things like this, but it's really good to see you', Sonny said to Jane.

'That bad, huh? Have you played "cemetery" yet?'

'Yes, thanks for the tip. But I had to break it up because something in the carpet kept making Tad sneeze so that he lost every time. They didn't care—they think _everything's _fun, even _flossing_—but …'

'This place is really getting to you, isn't it?' Jane looked around.

'Did you notice the exterior décor? Did _you_ like it? I don't know how I'd be making it through this if I hadn't managed to find ways to mess with their heads just a little bit.'

Jane looked around again. 'Speaking of which, where are they now?'

'They're hiding.'

'From you?'

'They may possibly be under the impression that it's a game of hide-and-seek.'

Jane cocked an eyebrow. 'So who's seeking?'

'They may possibly be under the impression that I am.'

They were interrupted at this point by the reappearance of Tricia. 'You weren't even seeking us! You lied to us! And now you've got a girlfriend in the house! That's not allowed!' She ran out of the room shouting 'Tad! Tad!'

Before Jane could speak, Sonny said, 'See? No need for seeking. Tricia revealed herself, and I'm sure she'll find Tad for us more quickly than we could do it ourselves.'

This prediction was rapidly proved correct. Tricia went straight to Tad, who turned out to have fallen peacefully asleep in his hiding place. Tricia woke him up again in order to have an audience as she repeated her denunciation of Sonny's iniquities.

Sonny explained that Jane was not his girlfriend.

'But she's a girl!' said Tad.

'And she's your friend!' said Tricia.

'So she's your girlfriend!' said Tad.

'So you're lying to us again!' said Tricia.

'And being mean again!' said Tad.

'Actually', Jane said, 'I'm not Sonny's girlfriend. It's true. We're just friends, not boyfriend and girlfriend, even though we are a girl and a boy.'

'But he lied to us!'

Sonny said, 'What should you do when people lie to you?'

'You shouldn't lie to people. It's mean!'

'Commercials lie to people, remember', said Sonny. 'What should you do when commercials lie to you?'

'You shouldn't listen to them! And we shouldn't listen to you, because you lie to us!'

'I haven't lied to you', said Jane. After a moment's pause the children seemed to decide to accept this and their original personalities more or less reasserted themselves. They decided that they liked Jane better than Sonny and they wanted her to be the sitter.

'But', they added, 'sitters aren't allowed to have boyfriends in the house, either.'

'Sonny's not my boyfriend', Jane said. 'I promise. A girl and a boy can be friends without being girlfriend and boyfriend.'

'And if you tell your parents that Jane had a boyfriend in the house, you might get her in trouble', said Sonny. 'But if only one of us is here when your parents get home, and you don't tell them any different, then she won't get in trouble. Isn't that right, Jane?'

Jane supported Sonny, and after another uncharacteristic moment of hesitation, the children accepted this.

While Jane managed the children into their pyjamas, Sonny asked her how she learned so much about baby-sitting.

'I used to help with my sister Summer's kids, till they got old enough to run away.'

The children announced again that they liked Jane better than Sonny, even if her hair wasn't as bouncy as Quinn's. Quinn apparently let them braid her hair, but since Jane's hair wasn't long enough, they wanted to exfoliate her skin instead.

'Quinn lets you do that too?' Sonny said.

'Quinn doesn't need it.'

'Yes, well, you've used "exfoliate" ', said Sonny, 'which was our vocabulary word of the night, so now it's time for bed.'

'But the vocabulary word for the night is "indemnification". You're lying to us again!'

'You've used the vocabulary word _now_, haven't you?'

Jane said, 'Okay, kids, we're all suited up, so it's time to blast off to sleepy land!'

'I guess I just don't speak the language', said Sonny.

Tad said, 'But you have to read us a bedtime story first.'

'It's on the schedule', Tricia said.

Jane said, 'There's a schedule?'

Silently, Sonny handed it to her to scan, and started examining the bookshelves. They seemed to be full of a predictable milk-and-water didacticism. _If we're going to have a didactic bedtime story_, he thought, _I should be able to come up with a better lesson than this._ He whispered in Jane's ear.

'I'm very excited', she said to the children, 'because Sonny is very clever at making up stories, and he's going to make up a brand new bedtime story for you tonight, one that nobody's ever heard before, and I'm going to help him to tell it to you.'

'Yay!'

'This story', said Sonny, 'is called "The Boy Who Got Into Trouble".'

In fact, the protagonist of the story got into trouble repeatedly. Sometimes he got into trouble for not doing what his parents or his teachers told him to do, but sometimes he got into trouble by doing exactly what his parents or his teachers told him to do. Then, sometimes he got into trouble because he didn't believe what people told him, but sometimes he got into trouble because he did believe what they told him and it turned out not to be true. He also got into trouble by contradicting his parents or his teachers when they told him things, even when he was right and they were wrong. The only thing Sonny stopped short of was having the boy shoot up his school, and when his inspiration faltered, Jane was able to help him out with some truly bizarre imaginings of the kind of trouble a boy could get into. And each time the boy got into trouble, Sonny said, 'It wasn't always so bad getting into trouble. "At least I learned something", the boy said, "and I won't make the same mistake again." And he didn't. The next time, he made a different mistake.' After the first repetition, Jane joined him in each refrain. Finally, Sonny wound up the story by saying, 'Sometimes people tell you things that aren't true, and sometimes they tell you things that are true. The boy knew he would have to decide for himself which things to listen to and which not to if he decided that he didn't want to get into trouble.'

Tricia and Tad looked from Sonny to Jane.

'You know a lot of stuff, don't you?' Tad said.

'But we have to decide for ourselves which parts to believe', Tricia said.

Jane said, 'I made up the part about aliens living under the North Pole.'

'I thought so!'

Jane laughed. 'Hey, the kids are going to be all right!'

With the children in bed, Sonny and Jane returned to the living room. After a few moments fiddling with the television remote control, Jane managed to change the channel to _Sick, Sad World_ and produced some snacks to go with it. They had just settled in when Tricia and Tad entered the room, ostensibly in search of a drink of water, but immediately captivated by the forbidden fruit. After watching for a while, they announced that they liked Sonny after all, that he and Jane were both favourites, and that they wouldn't tell their parents anything to get them into trouble.

Sonny said, 'Don't tell them about what we're doing now, either.'

'Do we look stupid or something?'

Sonny looked at Jane. 'So much progress in one night.'

Thanks to the warning from the schedule, the children were back in bed, Jane back home, and all trace of the illicit snacks removed before the Guptys' punctual return. Sonny was half-asleep on the sofa but heard their entry just in time to switch the television back.

The Guptys asked him whether there had been any problems but Sonny assured them there had been nothing he couldn't handle.

_Whether you will find the same from now on_, he thought to himself, _is another matter._

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Pinch Sitter' by Anne D Bernstein<strong>_


	9. See What You Want To See

**Not So Different**

_**9. See What You Want To See**_

Sonny had no idea why Sandi Griffin was beckoning him towards a small cluster of students, including the Fashion Club, but he didn't need to. Quinn was sending him signals which he recognised as meaning that she didn't want him around, or rather, that this was an occasion when she particularly wanted him not to be around, more than usual. He knew what to do about that, even if it meant approaching the Fashion Club.

'You'll have to excuse me', he said to Jane. 'My sister wants me to stay away.'

It emerged that Sandi and the rest of the Fashion Club (except, naturally, Quinn) wanted his opinion on 'Brooke's new nose'. He couldn't imagine why. Probably Sandi's motive for extending the invitation had been the same as his for accepting.

Everybody was saying the new nose was 'cute'. Having no opinion, but wanting to say something to make the moment more awkward for his sister, Sonny improvised by saying not to worry, that it (the nose job) would probably grow out.

That night at dinner, Quinn kept discussing Brooke's cosmetic surgery until Sonny was impelled to suggest over dessert that they change the subject to liposuction. Their mother began talking out of both sides of her mouth at once, with the anxiety born of an uneasy conscience. She still remembered her counter-cultural youth, when she would have scorned the demands placed by the establishment on feminine appearance, and she wanted to believe that she was still the same person, even though she now worked for and in that same establishment. She could find no coherent reconciliation of her youthful idealism and her mature pragmatism, and wound up her ramblings by suggesting that it wouldn't be cosmetic surgery that got a woman elected President.

Sonny said, 'At least, her people will deny it.'

Quinn didn't care about the abstract discussion. Her preoccupation remained the imagined defects of her own nose. She spent a large part of the evening trying to push it into a new configuration. Sonny helpfully offered her a loan of his stapler.

* * *

><p>With the science department having no permanent replacement yet for Ms Barch, her classes were still being taken by a substitute teacher. Ms Li must have had to find her in a hurry. Sonny's theory was that Mrs Stoller had been one of Li's own teachers, possibly in first grade. She was easily old enough, and she gave the impression of thinking that she was still teaching first grade, and teaching it much the way it had been taught in the 1950s. The most progressive thing she'd done was try to give them classes on human reproduction, or, at the level she pitched it, 'Where Did You Come From?' (as in, 'no, the stork didn't bring you, and you weren't found in a cabbage patch, either').<p>

Admittedly if you had Kevin Thompson in your class you had partial justification for thinking it was first grade. Kevin's interaction with Stoller had begun with the most basic possible misunderstanding: he had introduced himself to her as 'the QB', and still had not realised that when she addressed him as 'Cubie', it was because she thought that was his name. (He wasn't the only student she'd renamed. When Sonny had identified himself to her, she'd said, 'Sunny. That sounds like a hippie name. I think I'll call you Sally. So much nicer.' Sonny had seen no percentage in struggling against this.)

By synergy, Kevin had always had particular difficulties in Barch's class, more than he did in other classes and more than other male students had with Barch. Just before her departure, Barch had given Kevin a special assignment, which required him to walk down the street greeting people while made up with a special 'ugly face': fake wart, fake black eye, cheek-distorting cotton wadding, and so on. This made him seem like a freak to everybody, not just to Sonny. Barch had explained the experiment by saying that it was supposed to provide evidence of social responses to unattractive people. Sonny supposed that Kevin's stupidity would have enabled him to believe her explanation if only it hadn't prevented him from understanding it. But he'd been conscientiously carrying out his task. He hadn't thought to ask whether Stoller's expectations of him were different from Barch's. As a result, he came into class late, still wearing his freak costume after his most recent public promenade. Stoller interrupted her recitation to the class about Benjamin Franklin's work on electricity in order to rebuke him.

'And when the lightning struck his kite, Franklin said, young man, you're tardy.'

'Gee', said Brittany Taylor, 'he wasn't very focussed.'

Kevin tried to explain how he'd been carrying out Barch's assignment, and how three of the people he'd approached on the street had called the police 'and I'm pretty sure this one guy fired a shot'.

'Now, Cubie', Stoller said, 'I can see we're going to need another talk about the difference between telling the truth and telling stories.'

'We think he's doing very well', said Sonny, 'considering how he missed out on evolution.'

At that point Principal Li's voice came over the public address system, saying, 'Mrs Stoller, will you please send Sonny Morgendorffer to the office? His sister—'

Before she could finish the sentence, Quinn's voice could be clearly heard interrupting to say, 'Cousin!'

'—his cousin needs him', Li concluded.

Sonny stood up. 'I don't know how I'll make up the classwork', he said.

'Where are you going, Sally?' Stoller said.

'To fetch Sonny', said Sonny, and left the room.

When Sonny reached the school office he discovered that Quinn had managed to persuade the school nurse that she had such bad cramps that she needed somebody to escort her home. He made a mental note (_school nurse: high gullibility_) for future reference.

What Quinn really wanted Sonny for was to accompany her on a visit to Dr Shar, the plastic surgeon, the same one who'd done Brooke's nose. She said she needed Sonny to give her an honest opinion. She didn't want to rely on her friends in the Fashion Club because she was sure they'd been to see Dr Shar without her.

For some reason Quinn was called into Dr Shar's office ahead of patients who'd been waiting longer. One of them started to protest but fell silent at the sight of Sonny. 'Emergency', he said. 'I understand.'

Seeing Dr Shar, Sonny's first thought was of _The Graduate_. 'Just one word: plastics.' His second thought was to wonder whether the plastic had entered her soul. She couldn't have done all that surgery on herself: there must be another equally shameless quack somewhere out there.

The doctor hadn't noticed them yet; she was on the phone to another patient, explaining how to breathe through the mouth when cosmetic surgery has made the nose a triumph of appearance over functionality. Quinn and Sonny were both seated at her desk by the time she got off the phone and asked Quinn—'whichever one of you is Quinn'—to explain the purpose of the visit.

'It's my nose', said Quinn.

Dr Shar gave Sonny his first surprise by insisting that Quinn's nose needed no work. A partial explanation for this emerged when she referred to the idea of a nose job for Quinn as 'an ethics violation Dr Shar just doesn't need right now!' but this didn't gel with Dr Shar's ability to find ways to recommend six thousand dollars worth of work on Quinn's face. To begin with. Looking at the computer-synthesised image, Quinn exclaimed that she was too cute. Silently, Sonny agreed. That was exactly the problem with Quinn, she was too cute. But he'd always thought that she already knew that. She should know as well as he did that she didn't need cosmetic surgery. Unless, he mused, it was to make her less cute. At which point the doctor cut across his thoughts to ask whether there was anything else. Sonny wasn't sure whether the question was intended to include him or to be directed at Quinn alone, but he took the opportunity to ask, putting on his 'delicate' voice, whether Dr Shar's computer could show what Quinn would look like with eyebrow ridges and a large sloping forehead.

Shar's response was, 'All right, funny gal, your turn!'

Sonny was delighted to think that now he understood how Thomas Huxley had felt at the Oxford meeting of the British Association in 1860, at the moment when he said to the President of the Royal Society, 'The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands.' He savoured the moment before he spoke.

Then he said 'Excuse me?' He didn't let his voice drop just yet.

_Artistry, artistry_, he thought. And then, _although sometimes even an artist lays it on with a trowel._

He turned to Quinn and said without emphasis, 'Do you really want to entrust the design of your physical appearance to somebody who can't look at me and tell the difference between a girl and a boy?' Without another word he rose from his seat and walked to the door of the room with the confidence of somebody who knew there could be no riposte to his thrust. Shar was hardly the first person to mistake him for a girl, but he knew Quinn would realise that such imperceptiveness disqualified the doctor from being a true expert in her chosen field.

He looked back when he reached the door and saw that Quinn had followed him without a word. She'd got the point. So had Dr Shar, as the reconfiguration of her face showed, with a total collapse of professional composure and demeanour. With all the surgical work she'd had done on it, Sonny was surprised that it could still achieve such mobility, and he told her so. That alone made the trip worth his while.

On the way out the same man they'd passed on the way in told Sonny he was sure it was going to be all right.

It was better than all right.

* * *

><p>Within a week, the cosmetic surgery Brooke had got from Dr Shar 'relapsed'. Her reconstructed nose caved in, and the implants that had given her fuller lips (fatty by-products of the liposuction that had given her a waist) shifted position to make Quinn describe her as looking like 'one of those beer dogs on television'. The Fashion Club completely lost interest. Quinn never thanked Sonny.<p>

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Too Cute' by Larry Doyle and from 'Lucky Strike' by Peter Elwell<strong>_


	10. Leniency For A Second Offender

**Not So Different**

_**10. Leniency For A Second Offender**_

'That's funny', Jane said. 'That noise outside sounds almost like the Tank', she went on, using Trent's band's nickname for the drummer's van, often used by the others.

Trent turned slightly to look in her direction. 'I don't think so. Didn't I just get back from a rehearsal, or something?'

Jane shrugged. 'As far as I knew.' She went towards a window facing the street. 'So what's that?'

When she looked out, she saw a van, only vaguely like the Tank, pull up outside the Lane house. The side door opened and she could see three figures, two larger ones holding a smaller one between them. She squinted into the half-light for a moment and then ran for the front door, calling for Trent to come with her.

As she broke into the open, with a confused but willing Trent behind her, some rough stuff between the three figures in the van doorway ended with the smaller one being pitched out by the other two and falling heavily. The van's door was closed again and it took off, tyres squealing, before she could see any more. She stopped to crouch beside the spot where Sonny Morgendorffer was half-lying on the ground.

Behind her, Trent said, 'Hey, what was that?'

Jane half-turned her head and signalled to her brother to 'drop it' before speaking to Sonny.

'Hey, it's always good to see you, but isn't this a little late for a social call?'

Sonny just grunted something that sounded like 'oof … huff'.

Trent, who'd come over to them, said, 'Hey, are you okay, Sonny?'

Jane signalled to Trent again but Sonny answered him, stammering out one word, 'Winded.'

'In that case', Jane said casually, 'since we're out here anyway, why don't we give you a hand up?'

Sonny gave a slight nod. Jane started to help him rise and Trent, catching on, moved to Sonny's other side so they could get him up between them.

'Oh', Sonny said, swaying, 'little … giddy.'

'Well, there's no rush, is there?' said Jane. 'Nowhere we have to be, is there, Trent?' Her brother shook his head.

* * *

><p>Quinn watched from behind a bush as a strange beaten-up old car parked in front of the Morgendorffer house. The driver, a scruffy guy she didn't recognise, got out and came round the car to the rear passenger door, which was being opened from the inside. The driver leaned down to help a passenger who was slowly getting out of the car. Then a second passenger came out the same door while the driver seemed to be helping the first passenger to the path. The second passenger shut the door and then joined the other two. Now they were all facing her and she could see that the first passenger was Sonny and the second was the weird artist girl from school he was spending so much time with, Jane Lane. Quinn still couldn't figure those two out. It was easy to see that Jane would never be really popular but there were always a few guys who'd be interested in that type of girl—although not if she spent all her spare time hanging out with Sonny, while Sonny wasn't going to date her or anybody, so she couldn't figure what was in it for either of them. The scruffy driver of the car looked more Jane's type. He was too old for high school—early twenties, probably—but there was nothing wrong with older men. He could be good-looking, too, if he made a bit more of an effort. You could say the same about Jane. Maybe they'd been on a date and Sonny had been the third wheel. That would be just like him.<p>

As the three figures came up the path, Quinn could see that Sonny was limping and the driver was helping to support him. Sonny was speaking in a low voice, and she half-heard and half-guessed that he was telling the other two that he could manage. The scruffy guy was telling Sonny that it was no problem. Quinn stepped out from behind the bush to find out how bad the damage was and decided, judging from times Sonny had got into trouble before, that it was only minor. The guy supporting Sonny looked at her and said, 'Hey.'

Sonny whispered, 'Trent, this is my sister Quinn. Quinn, this is Jane's brother Trent. What are you doing?'

Quinn whispered back, 'What do you mean, what am I doing? I'm coming home as usual. What are _you _doing?'

'Not a lot', Sonny went on. 'Jane, Trent, thanks for bringing me home, but I really can manage from here.'

From above, they were interrupted by the voice of Quinn and Sonny's father. 'What's going on down there?'

'Sonny's friends brought him home, Dad', Quinn called back. 'I'm just finding out how he is.'

'Can we talk about this inside?' said Sonny. 'Or do we have to make an exhibition for the whole street?'

Once everybody was inside the house, Sonny and Jane introduced Trent to the Morgendorffer parents, who were sizing up Sonny's appearance.

'Have you been in another fight, Sonny?'

'Sonny didn't do anything, Mrs Morgendorffer', Jane said. 'Some guys didn't like something he said and started pushing him around.'

'It's nice of you to stand up for him, Jane, but Sonny has to learn to be more careful about the way he talks to people.'

Trent said, 'Actually, Mrs Morgendorffer, I've heard about these guys. They're always picking on people. I think it's their way of showing off to each other, and to their girlfriends. They think it's impressive.'

'So you see, Mom', said Sonny, 'if you want to take us back to Family Court, I'll have two witnesses this time.' He paused for a moment. 'Or Quinn and I could just both throw ourselves on the mercy of the court, trusting in your wisdom, compassion, and keen sense of fair play.'

There was another moment's silence. Quinn saw Jane looking at Sonny, mouthing 'Family Court?' and raising a puzzled eyebrow, and Sonny giving a slight shake of his head in reply. Then their parents thanked Trent and Jane for bringing Sonny home and said that it was time for everybody to get to bed.

* * *

><p>'So, "Family Court"?'<p>

Sonny scratched behind his ear before answering Jane.

'This is going back a while, you understand. Although I don't think anybody in my family will ever forget it.' Sonny paused again for a moment. 'It was an occasion when I didn't actually get beaten up. You may remember I told you that there are a lot of other ways to bully somebody, although that probably wasn't anything you didn't already know. With younger kids, bullies can use just the threat of force, or even the implied threat of force, to hinder the victim from getting home on time. The ideal victim—that is, ideal from the bullies' point of view—will get distressed. "I have to go home! I'll get in trouble!" Then the bullies can make things worse and worse with the bare minimum of effort.'

'I'm guessing you weren't the ideal victim from their point of view', said Jane.

A corner of Sonny's mouth lifted. 'No. But somewhat less unsophisticated bullies can still get their kicks from predicting trouble. "You're really going to catch it when you get home so late. Where are you going to tell your parents you've been? I bet they ground you forever!" Even a total deadpan doesn't completely deter some people.'

Jane nodded. She could tell this wasn't hypothetical.

Sonny continued. 'So that was the situation I was in. My parents wanted to know where I'd been and I didn't have anything I was prepared to tell them. And just like last night, Quinn got home the same time I did, although in her case it was completely obvious that she must have been out with a boy, even at that age. With both of us out late at the same time, the parental reaction wasn't just doubled, it was squared.'

'How much had you broken your curfew by?'

Sonny made a pointing gesture in acknowledgement. 'That was actually my first question. As far as I knew, until then they hadn't actually established a curfew for us—in my case I think they tacitly acknowledged that my life was intrinsically too dull for there to be any point in imposing artificial restrictions on it, and in Quinn's case they may have mistakenly supposed she was still too young for the issue to arise. But my mother said we should have known we were out too late without having a specific time stipulated for us, and that was her basis for laying down rules for us, which is when the lawyer in her came out, also squared.'

'So, "Family Court"?'

'I think she had 613 commandments worked out for us, including enforcement procedures. Actually, she said that she and Dad had worked them out together, but it was obvious that he didn't even know what they were. Then as soon as they caught us breaking one of them—I say us, but actually it was Quinn, who was too insouciant to avoid breaking curfew and too careless to cover it up properly—anyway, Mom had to "prosecute" both of us, which meant that Dad had to be the judge. The only interesting thing about the whole rigmarole was how both Quinn and I, despite our otherwise totally different attitudes, couldn't take any of it seriously. Anyway, no point in boring you with all that, the end of it was that we both threw ourselves on the mercy of the court and got grounded for a month. I think it was a month. I mean, I think it was _supposed _to be a month.' Sonny paused.

'Time off for good behaviour?' Jane suggested.

'Good behaviour? What a cruel thing to say. No, the problem was that the Big House can be an uncongenial place for the warders as well as for the inmates. Mom and Dad ended up having to ground themselves in order to make sure that _we _stayed grounded. There was a lot of time spent with the whole family hanging around the house. We played a lot of board games—actually that was almost a kind of fun, in a way. I nearly sort of miss it. Except that I'm opposed to fun, of course. But my parents suffered a lot more than I did. Dad would have rescinded the grounding in exchange for favours at Monopoly if Mom hadn't stopped him. And Quinn kept tying up the phone, which made Mom fretful about the emergency work crisis calls she was missing. And then I started teaching myself to play the harmonica.'

'_The harmonica?_' said Jane. 'I thought you told me you gave up music in third grade?'

'Well, my parents' dislike for the harmonica more than outweighed mine, which meant I temporarily stopped disliking it, but it was also part of a plan. I taped myself playing, and I was going to leave the tape running in my room while I got out through the window, so they wouldn't know I was gone. But then my Mom rang up to tell me to tell my Dad that she'd be home late, and my Dad rang up to tell me to tell my Mom that he'd be home late. So I just walked out the front door. I didn't get the payoff for the trouble I'd invested in making the harmonica tape, but I still have it, and I could find a use for it some day.'

'And your parents never found out?'

'They found out I'd broken prison. They were even on the verge of instituting fresh "Family Court" proceedings. But Mom and Dad's parenting has always come in these short intense bursts. Then they run out of steam. Mom has to deal with a fresh crisis at work, and Dad lapses back into obliviousness, and the latest fad brainwave gets forgotten. I knew we'd reached the stage where Mom would be unconsciously itching for an excuse to drop the whole thing, so I gave her one. When you're dealing with offenders who are not yet hardened criminals, sometimes a degree of leniency is the best way to avoid having them end up that way.'

Jane interrupted. 'Is that the line you spun for your mother, or is it a description of how _you_ were treating _her_?'

Sonny paused for a moment. 'Read it how you like, I guess. Anyway, we agreed on probation. I had to call in to let them know if I was going to be out after seven. And once my parents had cut a deal with me, they didn't have the energy left to resist extending it to Quinn. And then, or so I surmise, they kept thinking about the harmonica, and the board games, and Quinn's phone calls to psychic hotlines, and they tacitly let the whole parole deal lapse, and things slid back to the way they were before, and everybody was happy. At least, as happy as basic temperaments permit.'

Jane nodded. 'And that brings us up to last night?'

'My Mom has sense when she gives herself time to use it. Even my Dad has a bit. After the first flush wore off they knew as well as I did how ridiculous the whole "Family Court" ballyhoo was. I mentioned the idea of you and Trent as witnesses just to help remind them.'

'And Quinn escaped too in the confusion?'

Sonny shrugged. 'You can't get perfect results every time.'


	11. Older Male Siblings

**Not So Different**

_**11. Older Male Siblings**_

Sonny was watching _Sick, Sad World _while Jane worked. Suddenly he realised she was pointing something at his head.

'Don't shoot', he said. 'The rumours are false. I do not go armed.'

'It wouldn't help you if you did', she said. 'The Stickmata 5000 is the finest glue gun on the market.'

'It looks like a science fiction weapon.'

'No, reality is bizarre enough for me.' Jane glued some more miscellaneous objects to the artworks she was constructing and then paused in her work and said, 'Why do I get so much fun out of this?'

'Past life as a bagworm?' Sonny stretched out a hand towards one of the artworks.

Jane made a restraining gesture. 'Don't touch! It took hours to build. It's the subject of a painting.'

'You're going to end up one of those old ladies who build their houses out of bottles, aren't you', said Sonny flatly.

An explosion of noise from somewhere in the house made the artwork collapse.

Jane looked irritated. Sonny said, 'I don't go armed, and I'm also not building and testing explosive devices to blow up the school. What was that?'

'That was Trent and Jesse rehearsing in the basement', Jane said.

'Jesse?'

'Trent's friend, the one who plays rhythm guitar in Mystik Spiral, Trent's band. I'm going to go ask Trent to keep it down.'

'Sounds like family business', Sonny said. 'I'll wait here.'

Jane looked quizzically at Sonny for a moment, then shrugged and left the room. While she was gone, Sonny wondered why Trent and his friends spelled the name of their band the way they did. Lots of bands tried that sort of gimmick, but it made no sense to him. Not just bands, either, he reflected, as he thought of his father's work as a marketing consultant, advising people whether to spell their brand names with four Ms and a silent Q. Then Jane returned.

'Trent and Jesse are going to an alternative music festival this weekend', she said. 'It's out in Swedesville.'

'They're driving that far in Trent's car?'

'They're borrowing the drummer's van. They call it "The Tank", and they say it's "indestructible". The only problem is the way it guzzles gas. I said I'd chip in gas money if I can ride along, and we were wondering if you'd like to come too.'

'All the way to Swedesville?' said Sonny. 'For a music festival?'

'It's not a special occasion or anything. We'd just be hanging out for a while. Of course', Jane went on, 'we'd understand if it would interfere with your busy social schedule.'

Sonny had to give in.

At home he discovered a reason to go: Quinn would be there. For her, of course, alternative music was purely a pretext to experiment with alternative fashion. If the 'look-gooders' couldn't do the 'alternative' look better than the professedly 'alternative' people, they might start to feel insecure about their 'lookist' dominance. Even Sonny could see the difference in Quinn's look, which gave him the opportunity to remark sardonically that if some guy called 'Knuckles' asked Quinn to be his old lady, she'd be ready. He bided a little time before letting her pick up a hint that her unwanted sibling was heading for the same destination, savouring the anticipation. He didn't leave it long, though, because making her uncomfortable on the way there was all he was going to get out of it. Once they arrived, Quinn would have no trouble losing him in a crowd of ten thousand. That wasn't a bad thing. Hanging around Quinn in public to make her uncomfortable came with the built-in devaluing offset of hanging around Quinn. But he didn't have to let Quinn know all his calculations.

Quinn did not share this capacity for keeping lips buttoned and couldn't break the habit of giving out fashion advice. On the day, as they both prepared, she told him not to tuck his top in. He didn't want to be influenced by Quinn's advice, but if he deliberately did the opposite of what she said, wouldn't he be just as much influenced by her advice? What sort of look would he want for its own sake? He didn't care, did he? But whichever choice he made now, wouldn't that amount to caring one way or the other? Maybe he could wait until he saw what Trent and Jesse did with their tops? But did he want to be influenced by Trent? He spent a good ten minutes fretting about the various logical permutations before he decided that he had always worn all his tops tucked in, not because of the way it looked but because it felt more comfortable to him that way, and so there was no reason to change. Then he spent another five minutes fretting about why it had taken him ten minutes to reach such an obvious conclusion.

Jane came over to the Morgendorffers' so that Trent and Jesse could pick her up along with Sonny as soon as they'd collected the van. It turned out to have only two seats in the front. Trent apologised and said there was plenty of room in the back. Jane slid back the side door, climbed in, and sat down on a big trunk. Sonny climbed in after her, banged his head sharply on the door, and bit his lip to keep quiet.

'Mind your head', said Trent. Sonny, wincing, heaved the door shut, then looked round and decided there was nowhere better to sit than beside Jane on the trunk, all without a word.

Silence fell as the van pulled away. That suited Sonny just fine. His head was still ringing. He sat absorbed in his own suffering, just aware that Jane was casting occasional glances in his direction. After a while, she tried to break the mood. She put on a tough voice to act a part and said, 'Yo, hi. I'm Dolores. I'm doing ten to fifteen for armed robbery. What are you in for?'

Sonny didn't want to play. He informed her that his head hurt.

'The cops did that to you, didn't they?' said 'Dolores'. 'Bastards.'

Before Jane could take her game any further, they drove through a toll booth. Jesse recognised the collector as somebody who'd been at school in the same grade as Trent and himself. Seeing him reduced to working in a toll booth set the two of them off about their commitment to their music and their artistic vision, and so on and so on, only in simpler language (especially in Jesse's case) and half the time in clichés. Sonny didn't bother taking in details. He just wished the noise would stop. The only small mercy was that now it was at least in the front, not in the back, which made it penetrate his skull less.

Jane wasn't enjoying listening either. After a while she begged Sonny, in a whisper, to say something to cut them off, because they were capable of continuing indefinitely. When Sonny didn't oblige, she responded to their remarks about their defiant refusal to 'sell out' by pointing out that they didn't have any offers from buyers. Then she looked sideways at Sonny again and whispered, 'Somebody had to pick up the slack.'

After that, there was quiet again for a while. Sonny didn't know whether Jane's remark had genuinely cut her brother and his friend, or whether their motors had just run down, and he didn't care either. He tried to let his mind empty, to let everything flow over him. He was barely conscious of their passing a billboard until Trent read out what it said, 'If you lived here, you'd be home by now.'

Reflexively, Sonny said, 'And bored out of your mind.' For a moment he wasn't even sure whether he'd actually blurted that out or just thought it.

Then Trent and Jesse laughed and Trent said, 'Good one, Sonny.'

Sonny realised he might be starting to feel a little better, even though when he checked his forehead with his fingers there was a noticeable bump. If only he could get a little fresh air! But the handles for all the windows were missing. Then the van jolted over something and both he and Jane were thrown off the trunk and onto the floor, which instantly cancelled out all the recovering he'd done. As Trent gave a half-hearted apology and Jane grumbled, Sonny realised that he was sitting down hard on something squashy. When he got up again he felt that it was still sticking to him.

Jane noticed it too. 'It's a sandwich', she said gleefully as she carefully peeled it away, 'and an antique!'

Sonny was almost relieved when her attention was distracted the next moment by a bee, except that the way his luck was running he figured the bee was bound to target him. He hoped bees weren't attracted to peanut butter sandwiches. Meanwhile Jane had got Jesse to pass her a rolled-up map and was stalking the insect. As it circled Sonny's forearm, she superfluously advised him to keep still.

'You're mine, sting-boy!' said Jane, as she brought her weapon down, but Sonny felt himself stung an instant before her improvised swatter connected with the same spot. He cried out involuntarily. As Jane moved back he looked down and saw the dead animal falling to the floor and a swelling already starting to form.

'It stung me', he muttered.

Jane said, 'He'll never do it again.'

'She', said Sonny. 'And "sting-_girl_". It's females that sting.'

'Oh', said Jane. 'Sorry.'

Sonny glanced at her for a moment. 'You're not vicariously responsible for every organism of your gender, least of all ones that you don't even share a phylum with.'

'I meant that the way this has turned out for you so far it doesn't seem to be much fun.'

'Don't sweat it', Sonny said. 'I'm against fun. And when I leave the house of my own volition, I can't blame you for the consequences. Just don't expect me to do it again in a hurry.'

Meanwhile, the smell of peanut butter had aroused Jesse's appetite, so they stopped at a diner. Sonny climbed out of the Tank with relief and Jane descended behind him. 'I hate to have to tell you this, but there's a big greasy spot of peanut buttery goodness', she said, 'on your … on the seat of your pants.'

'And you had to observe that', said Sonny.

Jane apologised again and this time Sonny accepted her apology.

As soon as they entered the diner, Sonny asked the others to order him tea and toast and then excused himself to go to the washroom. He spent a few minutes leaning over the sink splashing cold water on his face, trying to feel marginally better. On his way out he passed Jane.

'Can you rig that glue gun of yours to shoot bullets? I'm ready to end my suffering.'

Jane grimaced. 'Something told me you weren't in a good mood. Look, you said it's not my fault, but I do know this hasn't turned out well for you so far. Banged your head, stung by a bee, and …' She hesitated.

'And the less said about peanut butter, the better.'

Jane still seemed to feel guilty about having drawn Sonny into an uncharacteristic activity. 'We probably would have hung out a bit some time this weekend, so why not at the music festival? And I got a feeling Trent was kind of encouraging the idea, and that's unusual behaviour for him, so I followed the hunch. It still could be good once we get there. Give it a chance, okay?'

Sonny shrugged. 'I guess.' He genuinely felt that Jane was as depressed about the way things were going as he was, so once they'd left the diner and got back on the road, he agreed to play a travel game, 'I'm Going To the Picnic'. Anyway, it was a toss-up whether playing would be better or worse than listening to the others play. There was a need for distraction because, maintaining the consistent theme of the day, they were caught in a traffic jam. Jesse crossed up Sonny's expectations of him by contributing 'the cryogenically frozen head of Walt Disney' to the game, but all Trent could come up with was 'a dromedary'. Then it was Sonny's turn again.

'I'm going to the picnic, and I'm bringing armour plating, bodyguards, the cryogenically frozen head of Walt Disney, a dromedary, and … a Eurocentric view of world history.'

Before Jane could add something starting with 'F', another bump jolted the van and Sonny's glasses flew off. When they hit the floor, the bridge broke. As Jesse held up the two pieces, Sonny sensed that Jane was looking at him, but he didn't return the glance. What was there to say? Jane also said nothing as she carried out emergency repairs with duct tape. She was good at things like that, probably from all her experience improvising artworks out of found objects. Sonny nodded in grudging acknowledgement as she held them out for him to take.

'Not my best work', she said, 'but maybe it'll look alternative?'

Before Sonny could think about replying, the Tank started making alarming noises. Trent managed to steer it off the road just in time and then the engine gave up in a cloud of steam.

'And now our day is complete', Sonny said.

Jane quickly took charge, giving the situation under the hood a thorough inspection. It didn't look good. She pointed out a noise wall not far away and said there must be houses behind it. 'If we can find a phone, I can call for help. But somebody should stay with the Tank.'

'I don't think you should go alone', said Trent. 'Sonny, are you in the mood to walk with her?' Sonny agreed that it might help to clear his head.

Jane was already striding out when Trent said, 'Or, you know, maybe Jesse and I could go and you two could wait here for us.'

Jane shifted restlessly from foot to foot as she said, 'No, I think I'd rather go.' Sonny could see her lack of confidence in Trent's sense of urgency, such as it wasn't.

'No offence', said Sonny, 'but if it comes to appealing to strangers to sympathise with our plight, I think age and size make Jane and me better casting for the part.' Trent seemed happy to accept this.

Jane set a brisk pace and before long Sonny had to ask her to slow down for him. 'We aren't all in shape the way you are, Speedy', he said.

'I know, but I just want to get us back in action as soon as possible', she said. 'And you may not be a potential track star but as a walker you're not bad.' Still, she slowed a little and with an effort he found he could keep pace. He didn't have breath left for talking, but that seemed to be fine with Jane. He was reminded of the first time they walked together. She'd spoken to him in self-esteem class and they'd walked home together afterwards. She'd told him all about the class and then they'd fallen silent, but it had been an unexpectedly comfortable silence. He'd stopped thinking, that's what it was. He _liked _thinking, thinking was what he did, when one train of thought petered out he always started looking for a new one, and then, on that walk with Jane, for the first time he could remember the inner voice had fallen silent just for a short span, and it had been good. Thinking about it now, it occurred to him that Jane had probably liked it too. Knowing her as he did now, and remembering her as she was then, he thought of the signs that she'd been in a good mood. What people called 'happy'. As opposed to now, when he sensed that the situation was starting to get to her.

It didn't help that they found no houses behind the noise wall, only a cornfield. Sonny saw Jane's shoulders slump a little. 'Hey', he said, 'your logic was impeccable. There _should _have been houses here. It's just reality spitting in our faces as usual, and you can take my judgement on that as an expert. Come on, we might as well head back.' He thought for a moment. 'You managed to jury-rig my glasses, so who knows? Maybe you can do the same for the engine.'

'I did bring the Stickmata 5000 along, and who knows what else we might find lying around inside that mobile junk heap', said Jane. 'It's got to be worth a try.'

They headed back at the same pace as before, precluding more talk. Sonny reflected on his perception that he and Jane had been brought together by a similarly jaundiced view of the world, and about the subtle differences that appeared on closer observation. He was used to feeling slightly down most of the time. Maybe that wasn't true of Jane so much, and maybe that was why she seemed to have fewer internal resources for coping when the disappointments accumulated. He wondered why that might be. They seemed to see most things from much the same angle. Jane worked things out physically more than he did, with her art and her running. His writing was a less physical activity and he spent more time just thinking. Maybe that wasn't it, though. Maybe it was because she had Trent while he had Quinn. He'd swap without hesitation. Trent might be unreliable in some ways, but the only things Sonny could rely on Quinn for were bad. It wasn't that he wanted to have a big brother instead of a little sister. After all, Jane was just as much a little sister as Quinn was, but he might be just as happy to swap little sisters with Trent as to swap siblings with Jane, maybe even happier. It was odd to think of himself as standing in the same role as Trent, even in a purely formal sense. He was still thinking about Trent, and his sibling relationship with Jane, when they got back to the van.

They found Trent snoozing. Anybody could have been tired by the driving he'd done, but Trent in any case had the same sleeping reflex as an old soldier. Sonny watched irritation, resignation, and a barely detectable hint of affection all moving across Jane's face. It occurred to him that maybe part of what made Jane different was not a sibling looking after her but looking after a sibling. He knew that the Lane parents left their children alone a lot and weren't much focussed on parental care even when they were around. The three older siblings had also been gone for some time, so Trent was the main older person in Jane's household. Maybe some part of him was resisting the undeserved demand for early maturity and maybe that made a difference to what Jane was like, too.

Jane explained to Jesse what had happened and what she planned to do next. Jesse was ready to wake Trent but Jane shook her head.

'If we do get going again, we'll want him fully rested and at maximum alertness.' She paused. 'You know, Sonny, you look pretty beat. You might as well get some rest too while I work.'

'I guess you'll do a better job on this without me than with me.' Sonny's head was still sore where he'd bumped it and he was tired from hustling to keep up with Jane. What she said did make sense. He settled himself beside Trent and soon dozed off.

He was roused by Jane and Jesse shaking Trent awake, always a difficult task. He didn't know how much time had passed, but the sun was noticeably lower than the last time he'd looked towards it. Jane thought she'd sorted out the engine trouble and now she wanted Trent to try starting up. Success! But Jane's moment of triumph didn't last. The traffic on the road heading back from Swedesville was getting heavier by the minute, and then some exhausted pedestrian revellers passed by and confirmed that the festival was over.

'On the plus side', Sonny said, 'I feel a lot better for that rest.' He paused. 'Which I suppose makes me even on the day.' He paused again. 'Not something I can say every day.'

Jane, on the other hand, looked exhausted from her amateur mechanic work. Not long after they'd started on the drive back, she flaked out. Trent, normally so oblivious, surprised Sonny slightly by noticing immediately. 'Hey, Sonny, is Janey all right?'

_Big Brother is watching us_, Sonny thought. 'I think so. Just worn out. Maybe you should drive a little more carefully, though.'

Jesse gave a big yawn. 'I could use a little rest too', he said.

'Tell you what', said Trent. 'I'll pull over for a minute, you can get in the back, and Sonny can ride up front with me.' Without waiting for a response, he acted on the plan. Before long, Jane and Jesse were both asleep in the back while Trent drove on with Sonny riding shotgun.

After a short silence, Sonny decided that he liked Trent's tattoo. When he mentioned this, Trent told him it was a Maori design. Sonny noticed that he couldn't pronounce 'Maori' correctly, but decided not to point this out. Then Trent suddenly changed the subject from tattoos.

'Sonny, do you ever feel like maybe you're wasting your life?'

'Only when I'm awake', said Sonny, but it turned out he'd misunderstood. Trent was wondering whether he himself was wasting his own life. He hadn't made it as a musician yet and he wasn't making it as anything else either, and he was not so oblivious that he couldn't imagine the future that might lie in store for him if he never did. Sonny found himself warming to Trent for reasons he couldn't define, and for one moment looked at him almost fondly. He pointed out the courage that it took to pursue a dream, _especially _when you could see what you might be damned to for the rest of your life if you failed. Trent seemed struck by what he said.

'And even if it doesn't work out', Sonny continued, 'at least for now you're doing exactly what you want to, and a lot of people can't even say that much.'

Trent nodded. 'I guess. You know, Sonny, sometimes it's hard to believe you're only in high school.'

'I feel something like that every day.'

After a moment, Trent said, 'You're pretty cool.'

'Oh', said Sonny. 'Thanks.'

'Janey thinks you're pretty cool, too.'

'Oh', said Sonny again, thinking, _Big Brother has been watching us._

'She's never had a friend like you before. It's been good for her.'

Sonny found himself thinking that Trent was pretty cool himself, and was moved to confide in him a little. He admitted, 'I've never had a friend like her before. I've never had a friend at all.'

'But you don't want to date her.' Sonny lowered the shutters on his face and said nothing and Trent went on, 'I guess at your age if you've just made a friend for the first time in your life it might be a little while before you're ready to think about dating anybody. Or whatever.' They drove for a while in silence and then Trent said, 'Sometimes I think that Janey might be ready to think about dating somebody. It wouldn't be cool for a friend to spoil that for her. At least, that's what I think.'

The way Trent spoke invited no response and Sonny felt no impulse to provide one. After another pause, though, he said, 'Something I think is really cool is the way that in your family there are two people who look out for each other. It doesn't feel like that in my family.' Then they both fell silent. When Sonny stole a brief glance at Trent, he decided that Trent was looking cool.

Then for a few minutes he stopped thinking.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Road Worrier' by Anne D Bernstein<strong>_


	12. Misery Misses Company

**Not So Different**

_**12. Misery Misses Company**_

'Up and at 'em, big guy!'

Sonny came awake to the sound of his father shouting with enthusiasm.

'The womenfolk are still asleep, so it's time for the menfolk to get out there into the forest and prove their worth as providers! We'll have breakfast ready for them the moment they wake! Pretty good, huh!'

Sonny stared appraisingly at the being who had provided half his genes and, at least in theory, half his upbringing. There was nothing to say. He removed himself from his sleeping bag, dressed, and emerged from the tent to join his father, who clapped him on the back with appalling heartiness.

'Isn't nature great!' Jake inhaled deeply and then put his arm around Sonny's shoulder again and gave him a squeeze. 'And here we are together, father and son, the way it's supposed to be, getting food for the tribe!'

Sonny thought about woodcraft and living off the land. Then he thought about what he knew about Jacob Morgendorffer, Senior.

'Better stay away from the mushrooms, though, Dad. Just in case they're toadstools.' A pun occurred to him. It was lame, but so what? His father would never notice it at all. 'Fun-guy? Just not right for me.'

'There's some more of those berries we saw yesterday!' said his father. 'Remember, I said they'd be our breakfast?'

Sonny remembered. When his father had pointed to the berries and called them their breakfast, and then pointed to the stream and called it their drinking water, Sonny had pointed to a skeleton and called it their future. There hadn't been any skeleton, but he had been convincing enough to persuade his family to look.

'You're really getting into this, aren't you, Dad?' Sonny helped his father pick the berries although he didn't intend to eat any himself. He reflected that his father had been worse off on his own childhood camping trips with his own father, Sonny's grandfather, whom Jake Senior still usually referred to by his nickname of 'Mad Dog'. The day before, Sonny and the rest of the family had had to listen to the horror stories of sleeping on pine needles in a makeshift lean-to while 'Mad Dog' settled down by the campfire with a case of beer and got wasted. Back then, to hear him tell it, 'little Jakey' had wanted only that his father should love him for who he was, but 'Mad Dog' had been so harsh that 'little Jakey' was still wetting the bed when he was fifteen. Sonny conceded to himself that Jake Senior, in contrast, genuinely intended to love his son for who he was; it was just that there was negligible evidence that he _knew _who Sonny was. He hadn't even managed to give him a name of his own.

As they transported their harvest back to the campsite, Sonny looked at the tent from which there still came no sign of Quinn or their mother. He thought about his own experience of sharing quarters with Quinn, back when they were little, and their shared bond of hatred of the experience. If he'd been born a girl, or Quinn a boy, they might have been sharing that tent now, while their parents were in the other one.

The summary of Sonny's dawn reflections was that in more than one way he could have been worse off. He extracted not a scintilla of consolation. He'd known from before they set off that things could have been worse, thanks to a conversation with Jane. It hadn't made things better then and it didn't produce even the illusion of amelioration now.

They'd been watching a story on _Sick, Sad World _about climbing the world's tallest pile of guano, while Sonny had been explaining to an incredulous Jane that his whole family, including 'the Princess of Pleather' (as Jane called Quinn), was taking a long weekend camping holiday in the woods as a way of trying to follow the doctor's orders to reduce Jake's stress levels. Sonny had made a facetious remark about Jane envying his situation, but Jane had replied in apparent seriousness that she did. Sonny had made another sarcastic joke about what was wrong with Jane, but then she had explained that she would be spending the weekend at the Lane family reunion. According to Jane, there were dozens of Lanes scattered all over the country, and the only thing they had in common was their contempt for Jane's branch of the clan. This was why Jane's parents had excused themselves from going by designating Jane and Trent as representatives. Sonny had felt obliged to admit that a weekend in the woods wasn't as bad. Jane suggested that a weekend on the world's tallest pile of guano wasn't as bad.

Looking back on the conversation, Sonny realised that she might be right, but if he were on the world's tallest pile of guano he would still hate it, and not any the less just because there were even worse places to be.

He also wondered how Jane and Trent were getting on.

Meanwhile his father was calling out to Helen and Quinn.

'Are you decent in there? Breakfast is ready! The old man and his number one son have been out foraging and brought back a feast for their loved ones. Sonny, I'll go and build up the fire to eat around and you hurry them along. Ready in five minutes, okay?'

As his father moved to the fireplace, Sonny could hear his mother speaking to Quinn inside the tent.

'Come on, Quinn, you heard what your father's sounding like. Please. I don't trust myself to deal with him alone.'

As they emerged from the tent, Sonny said, 'Don't look at me. I've been up with him since dawn. I've done my hitch.'

Once they sat down to breakfast, things went more smoothly. Sonny's father triumphantly savoured his trophy berries, and his mother and Quinn seemed to find them useful as an excuse for not talking. Sonny just didn't talk.

Once they'd finished eating or pretending to eat the berries they set off on a hike. Although Sonny had the shortest legs of the four, he soon found himself and his father out ahead of the other two. Jane had been right when she said that he wasn't a bad walker. Before long they reached a fork in the trail. A sign warned that one branch of it was washed out. Ignoring this, Sonny's father started to talk about the life symbolism of the two paths and the choice before them.

'This is going to depress me, isn't it?' Sonny said. His father disregarded him and continued with his trite homily, which did indeed depress Sonny until he facetiously suggested taking the path that the establishment didn't want them to take. Even more depressingly, his father took him up on it. Sonny sighed, and went after him, trying to persuade him to turn back. His father's ranting escalated. Sonny didn't bother trying to take in the details of the content, but it seemed to be partly about being trapped in the rat race, partly about being oppressed by the establishment, and partly about wanting to defy his 'old man', 'Mad Dog'. Maybe it was a good thing for Jake to release tension and relieve stress, but what about Sonny? Why did he have to be here? And how was walking down a washed-out trail supposed to help? And why had his father just walked into a tree? And why was Quinn calling out for Sonny?

_Never mind why Quinn's calling out_, Sonny thought. _At least it's an excuse for turning back._ As they retraced their steps, Sonny decided that Quinn was calling him rather than their father because underneath all the flightiness and all the hostility she recognised that in trouble her brother would be a less unreliable support for her. Now how had he let things get like that? He castigated himself.

When they reached Quinn, she was standing by an unconscious Helen. When Sonny asked Quinn what was wrong, Quinn tried to explain what their mother had been talking about before she passed out. Sonny wasn't sure whether the incoherence of the explanation reflected Quinn's lack of verbal skills or some property of the original source material. Their mother woke up before Sonny could probe the matter more deeply. She recognised her husband first and said something about how he'd had them worried. Quinn said that it was Helen who had had them worried. Sonny said that he didn't remember having been worried about anybody.

Jake said, 'Quinn said you told _her _to lead the tribe. Why would you do that?' He clapped Sonny on the shoulder. 'Here is the eldest child, the stalwart youth, the one ordained to be the new leader!'

Helen stood up and confronted him. 'The patriarch always overlooks the feminine wisdom that will guide the tribe by the spirit of the ancestors!'

'The spirits of the ancestors!' they both said, in exactly the weirdly portentous tones the words suggested. 'We must seek a sign from them!'

As both parents bounded coltishly away, Quinn said, 'This is really scary, Sonny.'

'Are you turning to me for support?' said Sonny. 'I guess that means it _is _up to me to lead the tribe, which _is _a bit scary. But panicking isn't going to make things any better. We have to attempt a calm objective analysis. Okay?'

Quinn agreed.

'We're in the middle of nowhere, nobody knows where we are, we have no way to contact anybody, and our parents have gone insane', Sonny said.

Quinn agreed again.

'So I have to say, Quinn, calmly and objectively, that if you feel like panicking I don't see how it could make things any worse.'

'What I don't understand', said Quinn, 'is _why _they went insane. And why have they got that strange thing happening with their eyes?'

'What strange thing is that?'

'Of course _you_ wouldn't notice something like that. Their eyes are doing that thing where the pupils get really big, you know? It _can _look cute if you know what to do with it.'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Dilated pupils suggest an organic cause. Maybe they ate something psychoactive? Dad didn't really know what those berries were …'

'It couldn't have been the berries.'

'Right', said Sonny, looking at Quinn, 'because you ate the berries …' He realised that Quinn's pupils were starting to dilate, and so was not surprised when she started babbling inanities about 'glitter berries'. No point listening to the mad stuff. Within a minute, their parents galloped past again, this time in pursuit of a 'spirit animal' with three horns and a beard, a pursuit in which Quinn joined them.

Now what was Sonny supposed to do? He wasn't physically capable of restraining them. His mother had insisted that they spend the vacation with no means of communication with the outside world …

… except, of course, her own cellular phone hidden in her backpack, where its ringing was now disclosing her hypocrisy. As Sonny hurried to extract it, he recalled the dinner-table conversation in which she had railed at her boss for telling her that if she didn't take her vacation days she'd lose them. That's how this had turned into a long weekend, because she had been determined not to have her vacation day taken away. It turned out, though, that her resentment of her boss had not been sufficient for her to follow through on completely cutting herself off from him …

… and now Sonny had the phone in his hand and answered it, fully expecting his mother's boss to be on the line …

… and it was him, with a question about some depositions.

'Excuse me, but my mother is going to have to call you back after she has finished her _compulsory vacation_.' He broke the connection and then dialled Emergency.

While he waited for the helicopter that would airlift them out, he contemplated the phone. They'd told him to keep the line free in case they needed him to give them guidance. He looked around again: his family were dashing back and forth, behaving more oddly than he wanted to observe in detail, but they weren't leaving the vicinity. He looked back at the phone. Jane and Trent would be at the reunion, and he had no idea what the phone number there would be.

If he'd been as big a hypocrite as his mother he could have brought a book with him, but he'd been too apprehensive about having it confiscated if she caught him reading it.

He looked at the phone again, sighed, and went back to watching his family.

Eventually the helicopter arrived and the paramedics managed to herd the still hallucinating Morgendorffers into it. Sonny couldn't use the phone while they were in flight. When they arrived at the hospital he had to deal with all the doctors' questions. Finally, when his family had been taken away to have their stomachs pumped, he found a quiet spot and dialled the Lanes' home, hoping that Jane's parents—if they were, by some chance, at home and answering the phone—could give him a number to reach her.

To his surprise, Jane herself answered. 'What are you doing home?' he said, at the same time as she asked where he was. He answered first.

'At the hospital where my family are having their stomachs pumped. They ate some berries that drove them crazy and we had to be evacuated by helicopter.'

'Wow, that's cool. My family was already crazy without any berries, so Trent and I evacuated ourselves.'

'Oh', Sonny said, and then, 'Well, anything else new?'

'Nah. You?'

'Nah.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'The Teachings Of Don Jake' by Glenn Eichler and 'The Old And The Beatiful' by Rachelle Romberg<strong>_


	13. When Your Soul Is In My Soul's Stead'

**Not So Different**

_**13. 'When Your Soul Is In My Soul's Stead'**_

Sonny had been asking Jane about Tommy Sherman. Jane knew about him from Trent, who'd been at school with him, and she had been filling Sonny in on the details. He had been the quarterback who had led the school's football team, the Lawndale Lions, to the state championship. He was a showboater, always trying to run in the touchdowns himself, but it hadn't stopped him from being a huge crowd-pleaser. Nor had his habit of colliding at full tilt with the goalpost because he was too busy waving to the crowd to pay attention to where he was going. Now he was coming back to the school for a special ceremony because a new goalpost was being named after him, one specially designed to break apart in a collision without fracturing any skulls. It was the announcement of Tommy Sherman's attendance at the ceremony which had got Sonny asking questions.

As Jane wound up her story, she saw Jodie coming up to them. Jodie had to make a speech at the ceremony as a representative of the student council. She was having trouble figuring out what to say and was hoping for Sonny to help her. Of course she recognised that Sonny was the only tenth-grader in the same class as her academically, particularly good with words, and quick-witted. What she didn't realise was that Sonny was sworn to use his powers only for sarcasm.

'Why don't you just say "You don't need me to tell you what's important today"?'

Jodie waited for something more, but Sonny wasn't even looking at her. Jane took pity on her. 'You don't get it, huh? If you said anything at all after that, it would make you a liar. So you just sit down.' Off to the side she saw Sonny give a slight nod. 'This whole event is happening because people already think _football _is the most important thing at Lawndale High, so why would they need you to confirm it?'

'Gosh, thanks so much', said Jodie. 'You think I like this?'

'Like it?' said Sonny. 'What does liking anything have to do with anything? Are you on Student Council because you like it?'

Jodie stood up. 'I've got a job to do. I just wish I felt better about it.' She walked off.

Jane watched her go and then looked back at Sonny. He shrugged.

* * *

><p>Even without Jane's description, Sonny thought he would have had no trouble recognising Tommy Sherman when he saw him. He was the sort of muscle-bound ox that gives muscle-bound oxen a bad name. The first time Sonny caught sight of him he was in the hallway propositioning Brittany Taylor. He was so crass and obnoxious about it that it drove even Brittany to slap him. Sonny was a little surprised: he wouldn't have thought she had it in her. Tommy Sherman, by contrast, he could see was full of it. His impregnable self-regard was not even scuffed by the rejection.<p>

A later sighting of Tommy Sherman strutting the hallway gave Sonny what he thought of as the definitive mental picture to go with the word 'swaggerer'. Then Kevin Thompson and 'Mack' Mackenzie crossed Sherman's path and Kevin promptly began adulating. Sherman openly displayed his contempt for Kevin, but Kevin wore the armour of invincible ignorance. Sonny had always suspected that Brittany was marginally less clueless than her beef-witted beau, and this tended to confirm his reading. Mack, on the other hand, clearly had no trouble in picking up on how Sherman was sneering first at the oblivious Kevin and then at Mack himself. He remained polite, but if Sherman had cared at all about how other people felt about him he would have easily seen that Mack had no time for him. Sonny found this interesting, because Mack was the captain of the football team, yet hadn't let Tommy Sherman's fame deprive him of all sense.

Anyway, the bottom line was the same as always. Tommy Sherman was as devoid of appeal as Sonny had expected him to be, but Sonny wasn't going to change who he was because of that. He certainly wasn't going to start charging to the aid of his classmates, any of them.

* * *

><p>Jane walked with Sonny to his locker and they discovered Tommy Sherman leaning against it.<p>

'Excuse me', Sonny said.

Tommy Sherman looked at Sonny, then turned to Jane.

'Is your boyfriend trying to impress me? Even you should be able to do better than a loser like him. Maybe even I'd talk to you.' He snorted. 'Like, four hours into a kegger.'

Jane said, 'Perhaps after I vomit on your shoes …'

Sonny said, 'Excuse me, can I get to my locker, please? Oh, and just for the record, Jane's not my girlfriend.'

'And that's why you're trying to impress her by facing off with me, is it? I guess you know who I am? Tommy Sherman?'

'I've seen you around enough today, insulting everybody you speak to, to know who you think you are: the centre of the universe. And I know who half the school thinks you are: a gigantic hero because of the way you can carry a football. And, only since you ask, I know _what _I think you are: an obstacle between me and my locker. Now perhaps if you haven't got any more questions you'll let me through and then neither of us will have to have anything to do with the other ever again.'

Tommy Sherman took a step towards Sonny. 'The loser's having trouble getting at his locker, is he? Maybe the winner should give him a hand.' Then he stuck his foot in front of Sonny, grabbed him by the shoulders, jerked and tripped him off his feet, slammed him hard into the lockers, and let him drop.

Jane felt herself clench involuntarily as she took one step forward. Then she saw Sonny look up from the floor and turn his gaze on her. There was a message for her on his face, one that only she could have read. A vivid image of that expression, transformed into a painting, formed in her mind, replacing the one that had blazed there a moment before. His gaze still fixed entirely on her, he started to speak in his usual inflectionless voice.

'Ms Li usually skimps on expenses for furniture and fittings round here, but having tested them against my extensive experience I can say at least that the lockers are constructed as sturdily as any I've ever encountered.'

_Still Sonny Morgendorffer_, Jane remembered. She could sense him willing her not to act or to speak. Except for raising his head to look at and speak to her, he hadn't moved.

'You may have a smart mouth on you, but you're still a loser', said Tommy Sherman. 'I guess you still need another lesson about winners and losers.' He hauled Sonny halfway to upright and then slammed him hard with an elbow, letting him drop at the same time and then kneeing him on the way down.

'Now I'm going to check out the plaque they've put up for the new goalpost. For a _winner_. Not that you'd know what that means.' He strutted off.

Jane took another step forward and then hesitated. Sonny read her mind.

'I can manage', he said. 'But if, purely to keep yourself busy, you felt like giving me a hand up, it wouldn't hurt. I am a bit winded.'

Jane helped Sonny up. He winced, but she thought he probably wasn't badly hurt.

'I don't think Tommy Sherman likes you', she said.

'What _Tommy Sherman_ thinks? _That_, I don't care about.' Without another word, Sonny opened his locker and started taking books out of it as if nothing had happened.

A loud crash broke into their thoughts, followed by a rush of students along the hallway. They could hear people shouting about something. Kevin's wail rose above the others.

'Oh my God! The goalpost fell! Tommy Sherman's dead! He's dead!'

Images collided in Jane's head. She felt unsteady and looked to Sonny. His expression was unreadable.

* * *

><p>Sonny looked at Jane as she startled at the surprise of Tommy Sherman's death. He could read at least part of what was written on her face, and he decided that this was not yet the time to talk. Looking round for a way to change the subject, he noticed a teacher among the milling students in the hallway, wringing her hands and asking if there was anything she could do for 'the children'.<p>

'That's Ms Onepu', Sonny said, pointing her out to Jane. 'She's the new teacher in the science department, the permanent replacement for Ms Barch.'

Jane blinked and gathered herself. 'She seems very upset about Tommy Sherman', she said flatly.

'I don't know', Sonny said, shaking his head. 'She's like that pretty much all the time.'

Sonny managed to steer the conversation to other topics, but Jane didn't seem particularly eager to talk about anything and soon they lapsed into silence. Neither of them chose to return to the subject of Tommy Sherman, but the school did, by organising a memorial service for him, held in the auditorium. To the embarrassment of Brittany and the irritation of Ms Li, Kevin bawled continuously until Ms Onepu helped him outside to recover.

Afterwards, as Sonny walked with Jane along the hallway, he tested her reaction.

'I'm glad none of those people have any idea that we were the last to talk with him', he said. 'I don't think I'd want any of them to know how we felt about Tommy Sherman, and I don't think they'd have liked to hear about it either. The way they were all carrying on about him, I don't think there'd be a good fit between the way they're feeling and the way we felt.'

Jane said, 'I don't know what sort of fit there is between the way you felt and the way I felt.' She shrugged. 'I'm going home to change and then out for a run.'

'We could do the walk home part together, and talk about what fits and what doesn't.'

'I think I'd like a little time by myself. Maybe later.'

'Okay', said Sonny, still watching her face carefully. 'Later's good too.'

Sonny watched Jane go until Kevin approached him. _What would _Kevin_ think if he knew about my encounter with Tommy Sherman? _He dismissed the question as being as uninteresting as everything else to do with Kevin. To his surprise, however, Kevin was interested in talking with him, and about Tommy Sherman to boot.

Later, at home, he called Jane and talked with her about it.

'It was like a parade of stupid', he said. 'First Kevin, then Brittany, and then O'Neill, and they all said the same things. They all said, with unconscious implausibility (that is, considering the speakers), "It really makes you think", and they all wanted to talk with me because they think of me as somebody habituated to gloom and depression, which is what they're feeling because of Tommy Sherman's death. Suddenly being perceived as an expert on downers and bummers makes me in demand instead of shunned, although not in a way that I like any better. Talking with O'Neill my main concern was the usual one, not to have him fantasise that I'd made a suggestion he could turn into a class project. Well, I dodged that bullet. Brittany was the one who surprised me. She was having negative feelings about Tommy Sherman because of the way he behaved when he propositioned her, and when he died she was troubled because there wasn't a good fit between the feelings she had and the feelings she thought she should have. She has enough insight to see that she couldn't talk to Kevin about that, which was my first suggestion, because I'd always rather have Brittany talking with Kevin than talking with me. So, not only to my surprise, but also to my disquiet, I may have actually helped her straighten out her feelings. Kevin alone is enough reason for me not to want Brittany to think about me positively, or at all, so I just have to hope that her relief will restore her default settings and any thoughts of me will float out of her skull on the air currents. As for my own little chat with Kevin, I know what I think I said to him, but what Kevin thought I was saying, or what Kevin thought he was saying himself, is anybody's guess. For Kevin confusion is not a condition, it's a way of life, but you know that. Anyway, as Kevin himself generously pointed out, I didn't lower his opinion of me because there just isn't much room for that, and the exchange ended with him going away, which is always a good thing.'

'So', said Jane, 'you got them all squared away? You're the man of the hour. Do you think I should talk with you?'

'That's what I was hoping. I could really use some time with one of the _higher_ life forms about now to clear my head.'

'Do I qualify?' said Jane. 'Anyway, I'm going out for a run now.'

'Right, you mentioned that before. Sorry. I guess exposure to all that stupidity disoriented me a little and I wasn't sure whether you might have been out and come back already. Later still okay?'

'I don't know. I think it's going to be a long run.'

'Okay', said Sonny. 'I might drop by some time later and see whether you're back. Have a good run. I hope it does help to clear your head. See you.' He hung up.

He had only just turned on _Sick, Sad World_ when Quinn knocked on the door. When he invited her in she said his name enquiringly. Then, as she entered the room, she checked herself and her tone changed. 'Wow, your room still looks like this?'

'Need help filling out your picture order form?' said Sonny. 'It's Q—U—I—…'

Quinn ignored his baiting and reverted to her earlier manner. 'Sonny, can I talk to you? About the dead guy?'

'Don't tell me', said Sonny. 'It really made you think. And you want to talk to me about it because I'm the misery expert.'

As it turned out, Sonny found himself in the unwonted and unwelcome position of being forced, as a matter of honesty, to make a favourable admission about Quinn, even if it was only to himself. Unlike his earlier trio of patients, she actually was thinking, even if not much, and he found himself willy-nilly collaborating with her in a constructive analysis. As if that wasn't enough, he had to endure her recounting it all over again as part of the dinner-table conversation with their parents. Quinn had been inspired to call all the members of the Fashion Club and get them to agree to take up a collection for safe new goalposts as a memorial for Tommy Sherman. She credited Sonny for the inspiration. Once again he was acknowledged for being naturally suited to dealing with 'tragic stuff'. Great. He had to say _something_. He pointed out that there had already been a safe new memorial goalpost for Tommy Sherman and that it was because of its falling that he was dead. Quinn was unfazed. She'd found a reason to go back to feeling good about herself and that was all that mattered to her.

Helen asked Sonny how _he_ was feeling.

He sensed a betraying motion on the part of his facial muscles as he told her that he felt great. 'How else could I feel? I'm the misery expert.' He took his leave and headed for Jane's.

Sonny's knock was answered by Trent.

'Hey, Sonny. Janey—'

Sonny cut in. 'Do you know whether she's back from her run yet?'

Trent's face showed that he was untroubled about being interrupted, but mildly surprised to have it done by Sonny. He took a moment to respond. He went 'Ahh …', coughed, and then said, 'Well, I guess I didn't see her come back in …'

'Do you think it would be okay if I went up to her room just to check?'

Trent nodded and coughed again. 'Could be a good idea.'

As Sonny headed for the stairs, Trent added, 'Weird accident to Tommy Sherman.'

'That's right, you knew him', said Sonny. 'Would you say it really makes you think?'

'No.'

'Thank you for that', said Sonny as he climbed the stairs. Behind him he heard Trent give a puzzled grunt.

When Sonny knocked on the door of Jane's room, she invited him in. Her face changed as she saw that it was him.

'You wanted to kill Tommy Sherman, so you felt bad when he died, and you couldn't talk with me about it because _I'm _the one who _should _have wanted to kill him but somehow I didn't', he said at once.

Jane just stared at him.

'So you've been avoiding me', Sonny went on.

'Well, I guess you've put a stop to that', Jane said.

Sonny gestured at a spot on the floor in front of where Jane was sitting on the bed. 'Mind if I sit down?'

'You might as well.'

Sonny acted accordingly.

'Everybody's been talking to me', he said. 'Kevin, Brittany, O'Neill, and then Quinn to put the cherry on the top. I think you should talk to me. You suggested it yourself, even if you didn't mean it. More importantly, I want somebody I can talk to, and the somebody I want to talk to is you. But you first, if you like.'

Jane frowned for a moment. 'You know a lot, but you don't know everything.'

Sonny nodded. 'I suspected there was something more.'

'You see that thing there?' Jane continued, gesturing at an oddly bent metal rod or pipe which lay on the floor in a corner of the room. 'I found it somewhere a while back and planned to use it in an artwork. Every now and then I'd pick it up and move it around in my hands, getting acquainted with every inch of it. Once I woke up in the middle of a dream and for a minute I was sure I was holding it. And then when … .' She hesitated, looking away from Sonny and back again. 'I could feel it in my hands. I was actually gripping it. And the picture was in my head so clear that I could have painted it. I still could. But I guess that's not going to happen now. I saw myself swinging it high and then bringing it down in a two-handed smash that shattered his skull', she concluded baldly.

Sonny looked at her expectantly. She started up again.

'Everybody ran to look, except you and me. Me, I'd already seen it. I'd seen it first, before it happened. I kept on seeing it, alternating with another picture, the one that blanked it out of my mind the first time, before it even happened, the picture of your face. Your face was looking at me and saying "Do nothing, say nothing, this _is _nothing, nothing has happened". You were just … negating everything? But it _wasn't_ nothing. So how could I talk to you?' She looked around again. 'I don't even want to see that thing again, but I can't pick it up to get rid of it.'

'Well, I can take care of that for you.' Sonny stood, walked to the corner, and hefted the metal object. He weighed it in his hands meditatively. 'So everybody wanted to talk to me because they thought the feelings they were having were what I'm used to, while you didn't want to talk to me because you thought the feelings you were having weren't what I'm used to. It really makes you think.'

'Is that why you wanted to talk to me? To make fun of me? We can just go back to avoidance.'

'Sorry. I had to get it out of my system. But give me a minute.' Sonny moved the metal rod through the air a little. 'Do you think I've never had revenge fantasies? Do you think I've never wanted to smash some bully's head in? Where do you think all that negation you saw on my face came from? That was the product of a decade's worth of practice. You don't have that, so don't expect too much of yourself. I don't. And I hope you never do have that kind of decade, either.'

'Okay', said Jane. She breathed heavily. 'I think I get it now', she said. 'But in that case, what could there be for you to want to talk about? You _have_ had your decade of practice, and you've learned to negate it all, and Tommy Sherman's death isn't something you wished for, it's just nothing to you.'

'It isn't nothing. Deaths aren't nothing. Have you ever heard that no man is an island?'

Jane wrinkled her brow. 'That sounds vaguely familiar.'

'It's a line from a work by John Donne. He says that all humanity is connected like a single continent, so that the loss of any one person to death is a loss to the whole continent, to all of humanity. If the sea washes away your own house or a friend's house or a whole major cape, that's a loss to the continent, and if the sea washes away one clod of earth, that's a loss to the continent. What Donne doesn't say is that some losses are bigger and some are smaller. If one clod is washed away, it's a loss, but not much of one. And that's what we've got now. The continent of humanity has lost one clod. As part of the continent of humanity, I feel that as a loss. But not as much of a loss. I was sorry for his death, but proportionately sorry. Unlike some other clods, who are reacting, in defiance of the evidence, as if they've lost somebody who was both a close personal friend and a stellar human being. Saving your presence. You, I wanted to talk to. I wanted to tell you that your fantasy of splitting Tommy Sherman's head open had nothing to do with Tommy Sherman really getting his head split open. I know you know that, but it's still important for me to tell you, because I know. All those others, I didn't want to talk to. But they wanted to talk to me. People are feeling bad and so they want to talk to Mr Misery. But I'm not miserable. I'm just not like them.'

'It really makes you think.'

Sonny licked a finger and drew a tally mark in the air. 'You got me. One for one.'

'Wait a minute, though', Jane said. 'When people take you for Mr Misery, what it really means is: "You think, Sonny. I can tell because you don't smile. Now this guy died and it makes me think and that hurts my little head and makes me stop smiling. So, tell me how you cope with thinking all the time, Sonny, until I can get back to my normal vegetable state." '

'How I cope with thinking all the time. It's easier since I met you.' Sonny paused. 'You're not like them, either. You actually did need me to help you think. You just didn't know it.'

'You're not just negative.' Jane gave a lopsided grin. 'Although I will not disclose that publicly without your permission.'

'Your fantasy coming before his death doesn't make you a bad person.'

'You're not Mr Misery.'

'All right, then.'

'All right, then.' Jane stood up. After a pause, she added, 'I told Trent to tell anybody who dropped by that I was out running. Why am I not surprised that he forgot?'

'I don't think he did.'

* * *

><p>Jane watched Sonny's reaction as O'Neill asked him to explain a line about love and loss from the poet they'd been reading. He'd tried Brittany first, but of course that had been a lost cause. Jane could read the subtle signs that Sonny was marginally uncomfortable. Perhaps he thought O'Neill was calling on him as 'Mr Misery'. Or perhaps it was just the usual worry that whatever Sonny said would be misappropriated by O'Neill for his own purposes. But he answered the question.<p>

'Actually Tennyson's not just talking about love', Sonny said, contradicting Brittany, 'or not just romantic love. It was actually the death of his best friend that prompted him to write the poem. So he's talking about all kinds of emotional involvement'—and here Jane saw a fleeting sideways glance towards her in Sonny's eyes—'all the potential of the human soul that distinguishes us from other animals. And he acknowledges that it comes with the cost of the risk of pain. But people don't think of Tennyson as Mr Misery, obsessed with gloom and depression, the expert on downers and bummers.' Sonny paused. 'That would be Housman.'

Jane decided to ask Sonny later about 'Housman'.

Sonny went on. 'Even when confronting the reality of great loss, Tennyson believes that emotional involvement is better than its negation, the absence of the potential to feel. It has its price, but you get something for that price. We have to accept the bad feelings and the pain along with the good feelings and the pleasure.'

'That is excellent, Sonny', said O'Neill.

'Tennyson had never heard of pre-nuptial agreements', Sonny added.

After class, as they walked down the hallway, Sonny answered some of Jane's questions about Housman.

'The poems in _A Shropshire Lad _don't have individual titles, so they're referenced by their first lines. There's one that starts "Terence, this is stupid stuff …" '

'Who's Terence?' Jane asked.

'I suppose it could be Housman himself, but his name wasn't Terence. I don't think anybody really knows. I'm not sure that …'

They were interrupted at this point by the approach of Sandi Griffin, who accosted Sonny. She'd heard from Quinn about his skill with 'bummed-out stuff'. Jane could see how happy it made him to hear that, even if Sandi couldn't. It didn't help that the thing that was making Sandi feel bad was her cat eating her makeup and spending a day vomiting.

'And the experience left it questioning the meaning of life?' Jane asked helpfully, but Sandi ignored her and asked for Sonny's advice again.

'You know what they say about free advice', said Sonny. 'It's worth what you pay for it.'

Sandi didn't get it. Sonny was being too subtle for her. After a moment, he seemed to realise this. Maybe he hadn't expected anything else. He stuck out a hand and asked for ten dollars. Sandi handed over the money willingly enough and Sonny pocketed it. There was a long pause before Sandi got tired of waiting and asked again for the advice.

'Find some other way to feel', said Sonny. 'Then you won't feel sad.'

'That's what I get for ten dollars?' said Sandi. 'Are you kidding?'

'See?' said Sonny. 'It's working already.'

There was another pause. Jane and Sonny watched Sandi's brain lurching up a gear. Then she thanked Sonny, apparently with as much sincerity as she was capable of, and walked off.

'You just made ten bucks off of that poor girl's suffering', said Jane.

'Are you suggesting that people might be willing to pay _higher_ rates for my advice?' said Sonny.

They looked at each other for a minute and then chorused, 'It really makes you think.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'The Misery Chick' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	14. Solidarity

**Not So Different**

_**14. Solidarity**_

'I savour the cosmic irony', Sonny said. 'On the one hand, you have the bad teachers, like Ms Bennett, and like Ms Barch used to be. Everything they do is awful, but as a result they're no obstruction to hating school the way it should be hated. Then, on the other hand, there are teachers like Ms Defoe who, as far as direct effects go, reduce the extent to which school is distasteful, but thus indirectly set up emotional conflicts because you've now got to deal with activities which are associated with them—good—but with school—bad. So the fact that she's a plus creates a minus.'

'Savouring's all very well for you', said Jane. 'You're not the one who has to deal with it. I do.' She sighed. 'When Ms Defoe calls me an accomplished artist and an original thinker, she's being genuine.'

Sonny swivelled his eyes and mouth at her pointedly.

Jane feigned a hurt look. 'Hey, I didn't say it, she did! When she says I can come up with something for this contest if anybody can, she's being genuine. When she wishes me good luck, she's genuine. When she says she can't wait to see my entry, she's genuine. How can I fight that? I have to come up with a stupid poster for their stupid contest.'

'And if Defoe selects it as one of the entries from our class, you'll have to hand it over to the stupid contest coordinator.'

'Yeah', said Jane, grinding out the word. 'Why does O'Neill have anything to do with this? What does he know about student life today?'

'He barely knows anything about his own life. He's not part of the solution, he's part of the problem.'

'The problem', said Jane slowly. She fixed Sonny with a look and they both stopped walking.

'Nobody said the poster had to be positive about student life', said Jane.

'Not explicitly, no. Have I been having a constructive influence on you?'

Jane was starting to get excited. 'I'm going to do something that's truthful about student life.'

Sonny responded with a strong affirmative.

'And how much it can suck', said Jane, encouraged by his tone.

Sonny was even more emphatic in his assent.

'Blowing away storybook fantasies about how great youth is', Jane continued, her voice rising still further on the back of their shared wave of enthusiasm.

Sonny agreed with what, for him, passed as the height of animation.

'With your help', Jane said. The wave peaked—

… and fell. 'No', said Sonny in his most colourless voice.

'Listen', said Jane. 'I haven't forgotten the time when you told me you were never going to collaborate with me on an artwork again, because you're not in my league artistically. But it's not doing the actual work I need you for. I'm looking for a concept. And the plan is to find a negative concept, and negative concepts are your best thing.'

'Thanks.'

'Sorry. I didn't mean that you're totally negative. I get that. But you are negative about school, and student life, and the stupid concept of this stupid contest. I mean, you're not going to enter it yourself, are you?'

Sonny shook his head. 'I was only having fun at Brittany's expense.'

Jane furrowed her brow. 'What was that?'

'Did you miss it? Brittany said she had a great idea, so I said I had one too and my poster was going to be about cheerleading, and then Brittany didn't know what she was going to do—I mean, she didn't know even more than she usually doesn't know.'

'Is that why she flounced out in a huff? You must have been proud.'

'No, that was because Kevin suggested she do something about quarterbacks. When I try to mess with Brittany's head deliberately, I can't compete with what Kevin does just by being Kevin.'

'Well, never mind about our comic relief.' Jane shook her head dismissively. 'The point is that you won't be doing a poster for the competition about cheerleading or anything else, because you get how stupid the whole thing is. But you must have plenty of ideas, ideas which I could turn into a poster, a poster which will announce publicly what you think about Lawndale High.'

'Showing everybody that I, Sonny Morgendorffer, have something to say?'

Jane pumped her fist. 'Yes!'

'No.'

'Don't make me grovel. It would humiliate both of us.'

With a sigh, Sonny gave in. 'All right, you can have my personal statement to give to the world. But', and even the slightest inflection vanished from his voice again, 'on condition of strict anonymity.'

* * *

><p>The hardest part was figuring out what the main figure shown in the poster should look like.<p>

Obviously it couldn't look like Sonny himself.

On the other hand, he didn't want it to be too obviously an opposite of what he himself looked like.

Eventually, with input from Sonny, Jane came up with a suitable image, drawing on a composite inspiration. Its stature and build were similar to Sonny's, but its face approximated Upchuck's, altered by the omission of the freckles and the substitution of Kevin's ears, Brittany's eyes, and a hairstyle based on one of Quinn's three keenest admirers, the blond one, but with the colour changed to brown. The clothes were basically Trent's.

Not much could be seen of this figure in the image which filled the main frame in the poster. The perspective was over his shoulder, as he lay on his belly at the edge of the roof of one of the school buildings (somewhere Sonny and Jane often took refuge on occasions of greater than normal school stupidity), looking down through a sniper scope into a schoolyard where tiny figures were running for cover. However, more details of his appearance were visible in the medium-sized inset pictures framed as thought bubbles. One of the three showed the protagonist in an open doorway with a bleeding nose and other clear signs of a recent beating. A second showed him being hurled from the open door of a van that had stopped at the side of the road. The third showed a large jock slamming him into a bank of school lockers.

When Sonny had outlined the concepts for the inset scenes, he had not said to Jane, 'You can do those from memory.'

Jane hadn't said anything about it, either. But she had produced a final work which clearly made Sonny's personal statement for him.

When Jane had put the finishing touches to it, they stood in front of it and looked at each other.

'Just as requested', Sonny said. 'That's student life at the dawn of the millennium all right, for some people, anyway. Another Jane Lane masterpiece. Congratulations. You know it's never going to be exhibited, don't you?'

'You don't think Defoe will choose it as one of the entries for our class?'

'Oh, Defoe. Sure, she'll put it forward. She'll say something about its being very challenging and confrontational, and ask you whether you're sure this is the statement you want to make, and then she'll acknowledge its authenticity and artistic merit. But tell me, if Defoe's choosing the school's entries in the statewide competition, why did Li make somebody else contest coordinator for the school?'

Jane couldn't see what Sonny was driving at.

'You've known O'Neill longer than I have', Sonny said. 'What would you say are his outstanding characteristics?'

'Cluelessness?'

'And what else?'

Jane hesitated.

'I'm not telling you anything you don't know', Sonny said, 'but perhaps you've never put it into words. Is it fair to say that he's pliable? Easily led? Takes the shape of the last person to sit on him? And is it also fair to describe him as squeamish, afraid of strong opinions, a shirker of confrontation?'

Jane grinned and nodded. 'But so what?'

'Do you remember when we got called into the principal's office about that woman we refused to supply fund-raising chocolate to, for no better reason than because it would probably kill her? O'Neill was backing Li up that time, if you recall. And do you remember when we got called into the principal's office about our math project on grade distribution? So how do you think Li would feel about a poster like this one? You know how she's already skittish about the theme here, and you know she made it plain that she wanted people to enter the competition to bring glory to—theme music up and under, please'—Sonny inhaled to imitate Ms Li's reverent intonation)—'_Lawndale High_. She's not going to see this as a bringer of glory, is she? It's precisely because of the possibility of a situation like this that she put O'Neill in charge, with the power to overrule Defoe. When he sees this, unless we're far luckier than I expect he will recover from his own initial shock at the meaning, but the next thing he's sure to think of is Li's possible reaction. He won't dare submit it to her for approval, but he also won't dare let it be publicly exhibited without her prior approval. So as official contest coordinator for the school he's sure to trump up some nonsensically arbitrary technical grounds for vetoing it. Do _you _want to get into a confrontation about that?'

'I never wanted to get into this whole situation in the first place. Defoe twisted my arm, remember? I believe in a community of creativity, not in artists competing with each other. I think this is a good statement, and if they don't want to show it, it's their loss.'

'Just make sure it doesn't become a loss altogether. Make sure to tell Defoe that you need to get it back once she's done with it, because you've got a buyer for it.'

'A buyer?'

'Me.'

Jane shook her head. 'If you want the poster, you don't have to pay me for it.'

'I want to. When the curators are preparing the first major retrospective of your work, they'll want to include your first professional sale, and when that time comes I want a sticker on it saying it was lent from my collection.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Arts 'N Crass' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	15. Payback Is A Barch

**Not So Different**

_**15. Payback Is A Barch**_

Deliberately inviting students to shoot each other was bound to remind people of the rumours that had circulated sporadically about Sonny ever since he started at Lawndale High, even if it was only a paintballing trip.

The official story was that it was an interdisciplinary field trip to study all aspects of the effects of warfare. The attitude displayed when announcing it by Mr DeMartino, Sonny's history teacher with the weirdly throbbing eyeball, suggested that he just liked the idea of seeing his students exposed to one particular effect of warfare, namely, becoming targets—and, preferably, getting hit.

Sonny had never seen DeMartino display an attitude to his students any different from the one apparent on Sonny's first day at Lawndale High. Listening to DeMartino was like watching a pot perpetually on the verge of boiling. Every few seconds the lid lifted to allow a short burst of steam to escape—in other words, the voice rose towards the shriek of utter derangement, usually in conjunction with contortion of the eye socket—but this periodic relief of pressure seemed to keep it, or him, balanced just short of the point of the lid actually flipping.

The school wanted parent volunteers for the trip too. That didn't bother Sonny. They were relying on the students to tell their parents, so his would never know. He had forgotten only one thing. The field trip was not just for his grade.

It was while he was watching _Sick, Sad World _in his bedroom that he was reminded. Quinn came in and commented on the room's geekiness.

'If you've just dropped by for an exchange of gratuitous insults', Sonny said, 'it will be my fine pleasure to accommodate you at a later date, but for now I must ask you to take a raincheck. The conveniently located door functions for egress just as well as for intrusion.'

Sonny wasn't sure whether Quinn was just ignoring him or had genuinely failed to understand. Her initial insult _had_ been gratuitous, or worse, given that the real reason for her appearance was that she wanted a favour from him, namely, not to tell their parents about the paintballing trip. Of course, Sonny wanted them there as little as Quinn, but why let her know that? If she had any sense she'd know it already. He told her that he'd already asked them to come.

She laughed nervously, paused, then said, 'Joking, right?'

Sonny reassured her that they would work together to keep their parents in their state of obliviousness. 'Later, after we have achieved this goal, we'll resume the age-old hostilities that have made peace in this region of the house a seeming impossibility.' _Growing up with Quinn_, he thought, _I don't need a paintballing experience to learn about the emotional impact of warfare._

Quinn gave her agreement and approval to his plan. He should have realised from that moment that they were doomed.

The first stroke of doom fell when Quinn entered the kitchen with braided hair. Their mother had only to pronounce her daughter's name and before she could even complete the sentence Quinn started to blabber and revealed the secret of the field trip. The braids were an attempt, as a Fashion Club assignment, to find a way of avoiding helmet hair. Quinn said she hadn't meant to reveal anything, but she found herself unable to withstand the 'pressure'. Sonny praised her for managing to hold out for a full ten seconds. Then he turned to their mother and said, 'Stop the torture. Under the Geneva Convention, she only has to give you her name, rank, number, and date of birth.'

His mother was excited by the idea of his being involved in an extracurricular activity. 'I smell college recommendations from your teachers!'

'That's funny', said Sonny. 'I can only smell hair gel.'

'Those letters can make the difference in getting into your first choice college.'

'First choice? In what way are colleges not interchangeable?'

His mother let that pass. 'Maybe I should contact the school directly about volunteering for the field trip.'

'They don't need any parent volunteers', said Sonny. He worried he'd been a shade too quick to be convincing, but he'd needed to get in before Quinn, who nevertheless offered her own confirmation. Just as he'd feared, she was over-emphatic. He supposed her heart might be in the right place on this occasion, but he wished her tongue were anywhere else.

Sonny's mind returned at intervals to this concern about his parents' (or at any rate his mother's) interest in the field trip until the actual moment came for the students and the supervising teachers to board the buses that were going to take them all to the paintball range. Scanning the environment warily, his gaze locked on to a potential threat, and Jane must have noticed. 'Do you see who that is getting on that other bus?' she said to him. 'What's Barch doing here?'

'She wasn't actually fired. She must still be working at the district office or wherever it was they shunted her. I guess she heard that they needed volunteers for this.' He shrugged.

'But that Ms Onepu's here too.'

'You heard O'Neill asking for parent volunteers. They must want every adult they can get.'

Sonny could see that Jane was scrutinising him carefully, looking for his reaction. He liked it that people mostly couldn't read him, couldn't detect what difference there was between 'baseline Sonny' and 'unhappy Sonny', but he also liked knowing one person who had the skill.

Jane said, 'You sound … actually you sound almost exactly the same as usual. And you look almost exactly the same as usual too. But … there's something, isn't there?'

Sonny shrugged again. 'Come on, we've got to board the bus. At least it's not the one she's on.'

While Sonny ignored their teachers and fellow-students, Jane looked out of the bus window. She saw a billboard advertising a tourist attraction, 'the Great White Shark'. 'You know', she said to Sonny, 'sharks don't really like to eat humans. They usually just tear out a bite and swim away.'

'Sounds like my sister's approach to dating.'

'I mean, sure, they often take a vital organ or two with them …'

'I appreciate your trying to cheer me up, but it's not going to work.'

Jane pointed out that the Great White Shark could give them something to do if they ditched the field trip. Sonny replied that they already had a vicious predator accompanying the group and she'd be waiting for them when they arrived. Jane hinted delicately that this was exactly why she was suggesting they ditch, and Sonny agreed to think about it.

On arrival, descending from the bus behind Quinn, he saw her start, cry out, and bolt in panic, a development explained when he saw their parents waiting for them. 'All right', he said to Jane, 'your passionate oratory has convinced me. Or something. Let's ditch.'

As with so many other misfortunes that had befallen Sonny at Lawndale High, it emerged that Mr O'Neill was at fault. Sonny's mother had taken a call from him about some other item of school business, and used the opportunity to ask whether there was a need for volunteers for the paintballing trip, with the predictable unfortunate consequences.

The proprietor gave them a brief introduction to paintballing and to the facilities, including the replica of the so-called 'Hanoi Hilton' (in which POWs had been held) and (in answer to a question from Fashion Club President Sandi Griffin) the 'comfort stations' (which for some reason had been concealed and camouflaged). Then, before Sonny and Jane could finish coordinating their plan to visit the Great White Shark, they were split up: Jane to 'Team Red' and Sonny to 'Team Blue'.

Sonny saw that his father had also been assigned to Team Blue, and deduced from his mother's absence that she must be with Team Red. DeMartino, in 'command' of Team Blue, was even more frantically eager to expose his despised students to the traumatic bloody violence of war, or failing that a simulation thereof, and ordered his 'troops' to 'move out' without more specific direction, making it easy for Sonny to duck off on his own. He wandered aimlessly through the woods for a while, hoping to run into Jane, trying to avoid everybody else, and feeling a vague sense of unease about what might be going on around him. Maybe he really was learning something about the effect of war on the individual.

Suddenly Sonny was ambushed by his mother, who was indeed wearing a red team armband. She pointed her paintball gun at him and he surrendered at once.

'Sonny, you could at least try.'

'I'm learning about another aspect of warfare, the experience of the captive.'

His mother knew him too well to be satisfied with that. She was launching herself on an extended rebuke for his lack of enthusiasm when her phone rang. As she began talking, they came under paintball fire and she ran off. Her concentration on whatever it was her boss wanted was unbroken, which was impressive in a tragic way. One of the paintballs hit Sonny and he discovered how much that hurt.

'Ow!'

'Sorry', said Jane, emerging from the bushes with her paintball gun still levelled.

'Oh', said Sonny passively. 'You've shot me.' He paused. 'I guess that means I'm out of the game.' He paused again. 'And that means, technically, that if I now go off somewhere else for my own activity I'm not officially ditching, or at least that's going to be my story if needed.' He looked at Jane. 'By the way, you've got a big splotch on your fatigues, as if you've been hit with one of the paintballs.'

'Yup.'

'Under the rules that means you're officially out of the game and therefore shouldn't have been shooting at somebody who was still in it.'

'I cheated', Jane said.

'Good work, soldier.'

'Will I get a medal for this?'

'I'll mention you in my dispatches. Come on, let's head out.'

'Okay', said Jane, 'but I think you should know I've been getting the feeling that somebody's following me.'

'You don't think you're …'

Before Sonny could finish his thought, he was ambushed for the third successive time. Now it was Nemesis, in the shape of Barch, blasting him repeatedly at point-blank range. Startled, he took an uncertain step backward, tripped, and fell. She stepped forward and shot him again.

'Thought nobody could stop your little plan, didn't you, you … you … male! Nothing but lying dirtbags, all of you! Deceive a poor, naïve, innocent, trusting girl, corrupt her, and then lure her away to ruin her life! Well, not on Janet Barch's watch!' She paused for breath and looked at Jane, who was too disconcerted to react. 'Don't trust him! Learn from me while you still have a chance! Don't let yourself be trapped into two decades of legal slavery and then still have him abandon you for a halter top and a pair of pumps, leaving you with nothing to show for tending to his every need but corns on your feet and a big rash on your chest!'

_Well_, Sonny thought, _that answers one old question. There _was _a cheerleader type like Brittany involved in Barch's divorce._ He tried to raise himself from the ground and Barch shot him again. The paintballs did hurt. He was going to have welts. Not for the first time in his life.

With the paintball gun still levelled at Sonny, Barch backed into the bushes again. 'I have plenty more ammunition', she said before she disappeared, 'and I'm going to be keeping an eye on you, so don't get any more of your smart ideas.' Then she was out of sight.

As Sonny started raising himself again, Jane crouched down beside him and shouted, 'Stretcher-bearers! Medics! We have a man down here!'

'Getting into this, huh?'

'Well, we're screwed. We might as well lie back and enjoy it.'

It started to rain.

'From your lips to God's ears', Sonny said.

'At least it'll wash some of this paint off', said Jane. 'Come on, let's go find that replica of the Hanoi Hilton and prove they're wrong.'

'What?'

'We do have sense enough to come in out of the rain.'

They saw two-person tents here and there along the trail, but agreed it would be unwise to take shelter in any of them because Barch might well still be observing them. They did see Sonny's mother and Principal Li go into one and Sonny's father and DeMartino into another, which was reassuring in the sense that every person somewhere else when they got where they were going was a bonus. Sonny also remarked to Jane that the pairings ensured that the adults would be learning something more, while confined in close quarters by the rain, about the horrors of war.

Their own shelter, when they reached it, was also depressingly full of the horrors of war, or their classmates, if that were a meaningful distinction. Just as they reached the entrance, they caught sight of Barch again. She emerged from cover to brandish her paintball gun at them warningly. Once inside they looked out through a replica hole in the replica wall and were able to see her with her weapon still levelled threateningly in their direction, her gaze unwavering as she cautiously withdrew into a tent. A moment later they were surprised to see O'Neill entering the same tent.

Jane said, 'Do you think he's going to turn the full force of his personality on her?'

'Yes', said Sonny, 'and then she'll eat him.'

They were about to fade into Sonny's accustomed position of unnoticed observation when Ms Onepu surprisingly demonstrated that she too had the sense to come in out of the rain. She looked around wildly and then came straight up to then.

'Sonny!' she said, and then, 'you're covered in paint!' (This was not strictly accurate, since a good deal had been washed away by the rain, but he still had more smears of colour than anybody else.) 'You must be far and away the worst casualty', she went on. 'Are you okay? Do you need any help? Are you in pain?'

'We've only been paintballing', Sonny said flatly.

'But I know those things can hurt! We have a responsibility to be conscious of the sensitivity of the children under our care!'

'It's nothing I can't handle. Maybe you should check on the others.'

Jane said, 'Hey, did everybody get back here?'

Onepu shook herself. 'I didn't even think of that! I must check at once to see that everybody's accounted for! Thank you for reminding me!'

To Sonny's relief (he mouthed his own thanks at Jane), Onepu hurried away, allowing him and Jane to resume looking round for any idiots doing anything entertaining. Somebody had music playing and a few couples were dancing to it; Kevin and Brittany, predictably and uninterestingly, were doing their favourite kind of dancing, the dance of the tongues. Sonny spotted another observing couple, Fashion Club members Sandi and Tiffany, overlooking a game of Spin the Bottle—or rather, Spin the Paintball Gun—being played by Quinn and her three most dedicated admirers, Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie. He directed Jane's attention to the by-play. In the absence of anything better to do, it might be worth learning something about Quinn's life. You never knew when that sort of thing could be useful against her. Their truce was over, anyway.

Sandi seemed to be looking sour at the attention Quinn was getting, but Sonny didn't know her well enough to be sure. Maybe she looked that way all the time. The three boys were trying to get Quinn to say which of them she liked best. To Sonny that seemed a strange thing to do when you should know that the odds are two to one against you, but nobody said footballers were good at math. Quinn was trying to use their competition as leverage to get one of them to treat her to dinner at some fancy restaurant she liked or, more probably, knowing Quinn, to get all three of them to do so.

Sandi, having no male admirers to manipulate, was manipulating Tiffany instead. First she got her to agree that Quinn was cute, then to assure Sandi that Sandi herself was 'way cuter'. _Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the cutest of them all? _Sonny said to himself, but Tiffany was not enchanted to be honest as the fairytale mirror. Sonny knew there was plenty of reason why Quinn was the one with boys always clustered around her like iron filings around a magnet. Then Sandi went outside to look for somewhere to relieve herself, and a moment later Quinn approached Tiffany and asked after Sandi. Within a minute, and without blinking, Tiffany was agreeing with Quinn that Sandi was cute and then assuring Quinn that Quinn herself was 'way cuter'. It made Sonny wonder what had happened out on the paintball range. Nearly everybody was wearing paint splotches; had anybody been fragged? He turned his head to Jane. She too had noticed the internal workings of the Fashion Club; they exchanged knowing glances.

It was good to have that rapport that meant words could be dispensed with.

He took another look at Jane and saw the expression on her face which he recognised as the indicator of artistic inspiration dawning.

'Lots of paint splotches', he said.

She nodded.

'I look forward to your next masterwork.'

He looked outside again. The rain was slackening and soon they'd be able to leave. In the meantime he pondered the dynamic operating between Quinn and Sandi. They did have some things in common: they were both evidently obsessed with appearance and popularity, and as far as Sonny could judge—which admittedly wasn't very far—Sandi knew as much about fashion as Quinn did. But if they were rivals, why did Sandi want Quinn in the Fashion Club in the first place? Was it Lyndon Johnson's principle, that it was better to have her inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in? Quinn, Sonny knew, was sure to attract a lot of attention from popular boys in any case, and presumably from Sandi's point of view it was better to have her doing that as a member of the Fashion Club than not. And if Sandi valued being President of the Fashion Club, presumably that counted for more when she could reign over a club that included somebody like Quinn, not just vapid non-entities like Tiffany. He was still working out the possible combinations when the rain finally stopped and everybody started making their way back to the buses, with Onepu dithering around them like an incompetent sheepdog.

Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie were calling for Quinn to hurry. She was lingering behind for some reason. Why? Sonny could see that she was still hanging on to her paintball gun, which she seemed to be aiming at something out of his view. Then she tossed it aside and came running. Li, DeMartino, Barch, and O'Neill all appeared from the direction of the tents. DeMartino was three-quarters drunk. Where had he got the booze? He probably carried a hip-flask. Barch was giving Sonny the prison-yard stare again, but Sonny noticed something else: her clothes were disarranged. So were O'Neill's. Sonny pointed this out to Jane as O'Neill asked whether everybody was accounted for. Onepu immediately started inefficiently re-checking the counts she had made earlier, while Quinn quickly gave an over-emphatic affirmative answer—suspiciously quickly, and she boarded the bus equally quickly as O'Neill objected that he couldn't see the Morgendorffers. Sonny shrugged and boarded the bus. As Li said, his parents could get home the same way they'd come, for all he cared. But he was still wondering what was up with Quinn. Could it be just their parents that were on her mind? He listened in on Onepu's fevered calculations, checking against his own recollections, and looked around the bus again as the last students boarded.

'Wait!' he called in the flattened shout which was peculiarly his own. 'Where's Sandi Griffin? Didn't she go looking for the little soldiers' room? Did she come back?'

From the look of chagrin on Quinn's face he could see that he'd guessed right. He allowed himself one second's pure gloat as Onepu, in a state of near-collapse at the thought that one of her precious charges might have been left behind, held up the bus to allow Sandi to arrive at a run and board. He could see Barch as well, staring hard at him, then at Sandi, and then back at him, puzzled because Sandi and he paid no attention to each other while he settled into the seat next to Jane. She'd never figure it out.

Sonny leaned over to whisper to Jane an explanation of what had just happened. 'So I've learned two more things about war', he concluded. 'Even little victories can be sweet.'

'And what's the other thing?'

'The Fashion Club follows the Corleone family rule of mafia warfare. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'The Daria Hunter' by Peggy Nicoll and 'Arts 'N Crass' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	16. JuJutsu

**Not So Different**

_**16. Ju-Jutsu**_

Sonny walked into the kitchen to find Quinn in trouble with their parents. That was always worth sticking around for. Quinn was adopting her usual problem-solving strategy: blithe denial. 'All' she had to do, she was explaining to their mother, was get an A on her next essay to avoid flunking.

'Yes, that's "all" you have to do', Sonny said. 'And "all" I have to do to become heavyweight champion is knock out Lennox Lewis.'

His mother told him that he wasn't helping. Sonny marvelled silently at her inability to grasp that if she wanted to influence somebody's behaviour, she had to think about the types of things that would motivate _them_, not about the types of things that would motivate herself. He knew her skill when she put her mind to it, so why wasn't she putting her mind to it now? Because of her elementary error, she assumed that Sonny _wanted_ to 'help' (help her, that is, or possibly help Quinn). Why would Sonny want to do that? She was making the same elementary error when she assumed that it would be an effective tactic with Quinn to talk about her own high-school experience. What made her think Quinn would be motivated by that? Normally Sonny would have loved seeing Quinn getting a lecture, but in this case he shared her desire not to hear their mother reminisce. He announced that if she didn't stop he'd have to call Social Services. An illustrative example of using the motivational incentive that might actually work: his mother might not find the threat plausible, but at least if she did believe there was a threat of intervention from Social Services she'd want to avoid it. Besides, Sonny enjoyed the drollery for its own sake, which was just as well, because his parents ignored him. Each of them tried again with Quinn, but they were getting nowhere. Mainly aesthetic motives stimulated Sonny to show them how it was done. He knew how to mention something that would get to Quinn: the prospect of being held back as the oldest freshman at Lawndale High. That was something unwelcome to Quinn herself and made her at least talk about applying herself to her schoolwork. He still had the touch. And he had his ulterior motive, too, but he expected that could wait.

Just as he expected, Quinn came to him later in his room. Conscious, perhaps, of her status as a supplicant, she knocked and asked politely whether he was there.

'No, I died three days ago, and since then you've been seeing my ghost.'

As Quinn entered, Sonny said, 'Mind the ectoplasm.'

Quinn wanted him to write her essay, of course. First she tried to appeal to the better nature that she must know he didn't have, then she tried flattery. These strategies weren't going to work, but no blame to her for making the attempt. She had nothing to lose by trying them before reluctantly falling back on the thing that would work, the thing Sonny had been aiming for all along: cash. The price agreed, she thanked him and wound up the transaction, ending by saying, with reference to the assignment he'd just accepted, 'For once you'll have something to do on a Friday night instead of sitting around like a loser, you know?'

There was nothing new about Quinn's insulting him. Why should that suddenly be a reason for him to forgo cash? Was he losing his marbles? But he did it. He told Quinn the deal was off and she'd have to write her own essay. At least the look on her face was some reward.

A little later Sonny was downstairs again, reading, when the doorbell rang. Answering the door he discovered a boy who fell into the gratifyingly large category of people he didn't know. He was carrying a bouquet, so it was no surprise that he was looking for Quinn. When Sonny explained what Quinn was doing (namely schoolwork), the boy was incredulous. Then Quinn surprised Sonny by coming downstairs in what even he could recognise was a 'going out on a date' outfit rather than a 'staying in unwillingly doing homework' outfit. When _she_ explained to her unfortunate admirer how she was spending the evening, he was more than incredulous: he literally didn't believe it. Quinn had to tell him twice and then, when it still didn't take properly, shut the door in his grief-stricken face.

Sonny said, 'Is this how you dress for one minute spent breaking a date?'

'Sonny, if you look your best when you blow a guy off, it makes him feel like you care.'

'Sometimes your shallowness is so thorough, it's almost like depth.'

Quinn, unsurprisingly, took that as a compliment. Then, desperate, she made another attempt to get Sonny to change his mind with an increased cash offer, without success.

'Fine!' she said, as she stamped upstairs again, 'I hope you realise you're making me do my own homework!'

Sonny reflected on what a scary thought that really was, but it was not until the next week that he found out how scared he should have been, as he watched their mother displaying on their fridge door Quinn's essay—and the 'A' which that clown O'Neill had given it. Once again both parents put to the test his capacity to believe the unlikely—not by their reactions to Quinn's 'achievement' but by their expectation that he share it. How could they not know how he felt about Quinn? Did they think everything he said on the subject day in and day out was some kind of joke? He mocked again, but just for the fun of it and to keep in practice: he didn't have much hope that the implications would sink in any more effectively.

They both kept going on so much about Quinn's impressive achievement that she saw and took the opportunity to hint that a cash reward was merited. Helen was dubious, but Jake told her he'd handle the situation and opened his wallet. Sonny pointed out that Quinn was being rewarded for something, getting an 'A', that he did all the time, and successfully guilt-tripped their father into paying out to him as well. Then Quinn piggy-backed on Sonny's deal, and Sonny piggy-backed on Quinn's new deal, and their father ended in desperation by throwing down his wallet for them to help themselves and made an undignified exit, saying, 'Helen, I told you I was no good at this parenting crap!'

It was Jane, at school, who alerted Sonny to the next development. It was not news to him that Lawndale High had plenty of people without sense or judgment (in addition to O'Neill). He had not previously been specifically aware, however, that some of them were responsible for selecting the content of the student newspaper. Jane was eager to share with him, from the latest issue, the so-called 'Smart Thoughts' column, a reprint of Quinn's essay, although she displayed surprise at his positive reaction. Sonny explained that he liked the idea of Quinn getting firsthand experience of everybody thinking of her as a brain. Over lunch he was still talking about it with Jane, who was continuing to read from the reprint of Quinn's essay, a facile discussion of the similarities between school and prison as if she were the first person to discover the analogy.

'I believe the correct technical term', he said to Jane, 'is "Duh".'

'You know, you were born to say that line.'

'The only reason she got an A', Sonny went on, 'is that O'Neill is emotionally incompetent to recognise that a cry of pain is not necessarily a mark of intellect. Maybe next time I have to do an essay for him I should just write: "I don't like doing homework! Please don't make me do homework! I hate it so much!" Then I could just spill a few tears on the page before I hand it in …'

He was interrupted by the unprecedented arrival of Quinn at their table, disguised in dark glasses, and a cap with her hair tucked up under it. She asked Jane to put the school paper away, to avoid drawing any more attention to her essay. Sonny couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Quinn so uncomfortable. Moments like these made being alive almost worthwhile.

Sonny said, 'You must be very excited about what people are calling you.'

'What?'

' "Brains" Morgendorffer', Jane said, and Sonny wanted to give her a cheer when he saw the look on Quinn's face.

Quinn objected. She didn't think her essay justified a new academic reputation. Secretly Sonny agreed, but that was half the reason he kept needling her about her future in the world of the socially deficient intellectual, with further able assistance from Jane and a gratifyingly panicky reaction from Quinn. It seemed she'd skipped class to talk with Sonny because she couldn't think of anybody else who could advise her on how to deal with this crisis. He didn't think her reputation as a brain could last much longer, but that was all the more reason to enjoy it while it still did.

Things started to look different when Sonny and Jane overheard a conversation in the hallway between Brittany and Kevin. To stay on the football team, Kevin needed to improve his English grades. O'Neill had arranged for him to have tutoring. From Quinn. (O'Neill!) Brittany was suspicious of Kevin's ulterior motives—and who could blame her? She was calmed by Kevin's story that he was going to observe how Quinn acted, so that he and Brittany could then follow her example and act like brains so as to be cool. Sonny wasn't sure Kevin was being honest—there was no reason why Brittany's original suspicions about his designs on Quinn shouldn't have been correct—but the fact that Brittany accepted Kevin's story, and that he obviously expected her to, worried him. After they'd left, he said to Jane, 'Only Quinn could turn being smart into a fad.'

'Don't worry', she said. 'Today it's brains, tomorrow pierced tongues; then the next day, pierced brains.'

Sonny was slightly reassured until Quinn walked by with Sandi and Tiffany, explaining to them that O'Neill (of course, O'Neill) had let her out of class early because she was 'catching on so fast'.

'This is not a good sign', he said to Jane.

Prophetically.

* * *

><p>Jane was sitting on the lawn with Sonny, listening to him talk about a meeting with O'Neill.<p>

'He said something about how he thought my writing lately could be more "jazzy". I asked him whether he was thinking bop, swing, or Dixieland, but I don't think he took it in.'

Jane nodded and Sonny went on.

'He'd dreamed up this idea that I could benefit from working on writing with somebody else. Guess who?'

That was no challenge. 'He thought it was a coincidence that you're both called Morgendorffer?'

'When does O'Neill remember names? I know what I should have said to him. I should have said "I don't need tutoring to write like her. Just some big crayons." '

Jane could see that Sonny's positivity about Quinn's new reputation had evaporated. 'Tough day', she said.

'I'm _not _letting it get to me.'

'Yeah, I can see that.'

Just at that moment, Quinn, who was sitting nearby with her regular admirers, Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie, announced to them that she had just written 'another' poem. They made much of it, because they made much of everything Quinn ever did. Sonny made a sarcastic joke. At least that was still normal.

Jane saw just how much Quinn's new status was getting to Sonny when Quinn and her Fashion Club associates walked past them in the hallway as Sonny was putting some books in his locker. Quinn was talking about the opportunities that might open up for her as a professional writer. Jane could see one of the muscles move in his face in a way that she recognised as meaning he didn't like what he was hearing. Then he slammed his head down on his books and asked Jane to close the locker door on it.

Jane blanched. 'Sonny … Locker. Head. Not funny.'

Sonny raised his head at once and looked round at her. 'Bad memories, right? I forgot. Sorry.' He paused for a moment, looking at her. 'Really.'

'All right, then', she said. But she still worried about how much the whole business with Quinn was bothering him.

* * *

><p>Passing Quinn's door, Sonny saw black garments strewn all over her bedroom as Quinn posed in yet others in front of her mirrors.<p>

'I really like the idea of you as an undertaker's mute', he said. 'Especially the "mute" part.'

'What?' said Quinn.

Sonny gestured. 'All this black. I thought it might be part of a new career aspiration.'

'Somebody told me today that my writing is existential, so I thought I should coordinate—you know, with wardrobe.'

'That would explain the beret. Too bad Simone de Beauvoir didn't have you to advise her.'

'Thanks.' Quinn switched accessories. 'By the way, do you know what "existential" means?'

'For your purposes, it means "pseudo-intellectual poser with a street fair outfit".'

Quinn changed poses again, shrugging off Sonny's remark. 'Listen, I'm still available to help with your writing.' She looked into a mirror. 'Does this black match?'

'Match what? The look I'm giving you?' Quinn just continued giving a satisfied appraisal to her reflection, so Sonny went downstairs to sit in front of _Sick, Sad World _with one of the sofa cushions over his face.

He realised just how bad things were getting when his father noticed that something was bothering him and he himself was desperate enough to let Jake cajole him into talking about his problems. His father's ideas about the sort of problems a teenage son might be having showed only that he was getting his ideas about parenting from even less reliable news sources than _Sick, Sad World_. Sonny explained that the problem was one of having your identity taken away, an identity that was the only thing you had, even though you'd never actually liked or wanted it. Unfortunately, his father was capable of relating to this only in terms of his own identity as a frustrated and resentful middle-aged man. To make things worse, he shifted erratically from an insistence on a continued attachment to this identity to a fantasy of abandoning it, running away, assuming a new identity, and leaving past mistakes behind. He ended up by grabbing Sonny by the shoulders and telling him excitedly to get out while he still could.

Sonny managed to calm his father. Then he said, 'Dad, talking to you has made me feel better about myself', secure in the well-founded belief that his father would misinterpret this as flattery.

Sonny's father wasn't going to solve Sonny's problem. As for Sonny's mother, she would be thrilled that Quinn was giving the appearance of intellectual interests. His problem wasn't their problem. He'd have to find the tools to solve it without their help.

The first tool to present itself to him, later back at school, took the unlikely form of Sandi Griffin, Fashion Club President. She came towards Sonny and Jane in the hallway, flanked by her two Fashion Club offsiders, but before she reached them she waved the others away.

'Hello, Quinn's cousin or whatever?' she said.

'Remember what I told you last time: free advice is worth what you pay for it.'

'I believe I owe you my thanks for stopping the bus from leaving without me after our paintballing trip.'

_Well, this is interesting, _thought Sonny. _Obviously she wants something from me. _Aloud, he said, 'Don't think it means I'm interested in you. I just noticed you were missing when Mr O'Neill asked, that's all. Good memories are one of those things with us _brains_.' He pronounced the last word carefully.

'I would like to talk with you about brains, and people who think they are brains, and if you have any advice I may be prepared to pay an appropriate fee.'

_Bingo! _thought Sonny. He looked around. 'Perhaps we could discuss the matter somewhere a little more private? I don't think either of us would want this to be overheard.' He pointed towards a vacant room and excused himself to Jane.

'This is about Quinn, right?' Sonny said to Sandi.

'The Fashion Club is concerned that her example is influencing other girls to be unfashionable by wearing all black. I have been forced to put her on a fashion sabbatical until she sees the error of her ways.'

'And you want me to help make that happen, huh? I might be able to come up with some ideas on that subject.' Sonny reflected for a moment. _With Quinn, it would be most effective to threaten her with loss of boys and loss of girls simultaneously … _Sandi broke in on his thoughts.

'As for the matter of payment …'

Sonny didn't want to lose his train of thought. 'We can discuss that later. I'll accept payment on results. Can you tell me, do you know of any other people who are concerned about the way Quinn's changed? Ninth-graders?'

'As the Fashion Club, we have certain responsibilities which other people don't understand …', Sandi began, but Sonny cut her off before she could pontificate any further. He had decided that if there was an angle to be worked with any of the ninth-grade boys, he didn't want Sandi messing it up, so he went back to his first thought.

'Excuse me, but can you just remind me who there is in the Fashion Club? Apart from you and Quinn, there's that vapid Tiffany, and then there's the one with pigtails who hyperventilates if you squint at her, right?'

'I think perhaps you are referring to Stacy?'

Sonny nodded. 'Yes, I've heard Quinn mention that name, but I wasn't one hundred percent sure it was the same person. Good. Now, if I were to write out a short script and give you each a copy, do you think you could remember it? If the plan I'm thinking of works out, you may not have to do anything. I think I might be able to tell Quinn some things that will change her mind. But if she asks any of you, you have to give her answers that agree with my story, and that's what the script is for.'

Sandi was doubtful. Sonny guessed the probable reason and tried to reassure her.

'It probably doesn't matter so much about Tiffany. You and Stacy are the main ones. And it's a very simple story. Look, you can see what you think once I've worked out the details. I'd better go now. We don't want Quinn to find out we've been talking, or she might wonder why.'

As Sonny walked away, he reflected that if Sandi weren't so snootily self-centred, _she_ might wonder why Sonny was so interested. If she started thinking, there was a risk he'd given her future leverage against him. He doubted it was much of one; certainly worth the leverage she'd give him against Quinn.

Jane was characteristically inquisitive when Sonny got to her house that afternoon. Sonny assured her that he and the Fashion Club were still natural opponents, but this didn't prevent a temporary alliance of convenience to deal with 'Brains' Morgendorffer.

Jane said, 'I thought you weren't letting it get to you.'

'Her writing's bad', said Sonny. 'Can't people tell the difference between good and bad?'

'You're not telling me that Sandi Griffin can?'

'No, I told you that's just tactical convenience, not a meeting of the minds. Quinn's new reputation is getting to both of us for different reasons.'

'I can tell you somebody else it's getting to', said Jane.

'Who's that?'

'The brain herself. She came up and talked to me after you went off with your new ally.'

Sonny had lain down on the floor, but at this he sat up. 'Quinn talked to _you_? Why? What did she say?'

'She thinks everybody's making too big a deal about one stupid—her word—essay. She wanted me to confirm that she isn't really a brain, because she's starting to feel like a phoney …'

'_Starting?_'

'… yes, that was my reaction too.' Jane paused before continuing. 'But, she said, she does like the way it's getting to _you_.'

'She's not stupid enough to tell you all that without thinking about it getting back to me.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'It _is _getting to her and she's thinking she might want a way to get off the hook, but she doesn't want me to see directly that she's squirming and she's hoping to save some face. What she'd like is to keep the points she's scored so far but stop the game and put us both back where we were.'

'So are you going to help her out?'

'Not if you put it like that. I still want this to be over, but I want to win the round first.'

'And obviously you were already working on a plan, because otherwise you wouldn't have been talking about some kind of alliance with your new friends in the Fashion Club.'

Sonny levelled a stare at Jane. 'I hate you.'

'If Quinn's getting some fun out of this situation, you wouldn't want to deprive me of mine, would you? If your plan works, the situation won't last. And speaking of your plan …'

'I'm afraid there's no place in it for you this time.'

Jane shrugged. 'Tell me about it anyway, and I won't mock you again.'

'Have you ever studied martial arts?'

Jane stopped work on her painting and stared at him. 'There must be something wrong with my hearing. It sounded as if you just asked me whether I'd ever studied martial arts. Don't tell me _you _studied martial arts, because I won't believe you.'

'Only the theory, not the practice. One of the main principles in several styles of Oriental martial arts is using the energy of attackers instead of opposing it. Like trying to use their own momentum to make them overbalance. So, Quinn's in motion from the world of the popular to the world of the intellect. Now I need to get her to stumble and fall, metaphorically speaking, and I'm looking for some leverage. The Fashion Club will be one pivot, but to do the job right I'll also need to make use of some of Quinn's male admirers.'

'But aren't _they_ falling over themselves for the new brainy Quinn?'

'I'm betting that that's only for want of a better option, which is only because of lack of imagination. If I can offer them the old Quinn back—and I think I can—then I should be able to get them to collaborate.' Sonny stood up. 'That is, if I can get past the initial hurdle of their probable antagonism towards me.'

'Probable antagonism?'

'You know me. I start off with odds of five to two against me before we've even factored in that they're football players. I'll have to try to see them before they see me. Luckily I'm good at that.' Sonny shrugged. 'Anyway, I'd better get going. I've got some prep work to do. See you tomorrow.'

Pursuant to plan, Sonny arrived at school the next day carrying six folders in his backpack labelled 'Joey', 'Jeffy', 'Jamie', 'Sandi', 'Stacy', and 'Tiffany'. He did succeed in spotting the boys before they spotted him, but only just, as if they'd been looking for him, too. Quinn was nowhere in the vicinity: Sonny triple-checked. That meant he didn't have to worry about blowing his cover; it also meant good recruitment prospects. For these three not to be dancing attendance on Quinn was a strong indication that all was not rosy in their garden. On the other hand, Sonny didn't like the way they seemed to be looking at him. He approached cautiously. They took up postures that could have been vaguely menacing. He slowed and extended his hands in a deflecting gesture.

'Nice going, brain!' said one of them. (Sonny wasn't sure which was which.)

'Yeah, I bet you think you're _so _clever', said another.

'What'd you want to go and turn Quinn into a brain for?' said the third.

The three of them glanced at each other for support and edged forward ambivalently towards a confrontation with Sonny.

'I didn't', said Sonny. 'But I might be able to turn her back if you want me to.'

They exchanged another round of glances and then all at once swept away their doubts and began begging for his help.

Sonny extracted the folders from his backpack and distributed the first three, taking the opportunity to fix their names in his memory for future reference. He gave them the same basic explanation he'd given Sandi.

'Sandi Griffin's in your grade too, right?' he said. He passed them the other three folders in a bundle. 'I've already talked with her. Give her these and tell her that they're what we talked about. After that all you have to do is wait.'

Waiting was also all Sonny himself had to do—not counting schoolwork, that is, but as so often it hardly _did _count. At the end of the school day, all he had to do was get home in advance of Quinn, and then wait again until she got home. When she walked in, he was ready.

'Quinn, I took some phone messages for you.' Sonny consulted a notepad and carefully refrained from looking up at Quinn as he continued. 'Somebody called Jeffy wanted to invite you to go with him to a big concert by some boys' group I never heard of. I told him that there was a chamber music recital which I was sure you'd prefer. He said he already had tickets for the concert, and he thought Sandi wanted to go, so he'd ask her, and I said that was okay because I could take you to the chamber music. Then there was a Jamie who wanted to ask you out to the movies, so I told him about a new foreign film at the arthouse cinema, but he was more interested in some blockbuster at the multiplex. He said he'd invite Tiffany instead, but you and I can go to the arthouse film together if you like. The next one was Joey, but he didn't want to go to the poetry reading I mentioned to him. He's going to take Stacy to a party instead, so the poetry reading could be another activity for the two of us. The last call was a bit strange. It was a girl this time—it was Stacy, in fact—and she was babbling, so I'm not sure I've got this straight. I think she started off by talking about some sort of special Fashion Club shopping event, but then she sounded very confused and upset, and said something about a "fashion sabbatical". I have no idea what that is, but she also said something about a mistake, and then something like "Oh no, what will Sandi say!", and then she hung up. So I'm not sure whether I was actually supposed to tell you about that. Don't be cross with Stacy, she sounds the vulnerable type, and it's really my fault.' Sonny looked up ingenuously. Perfect. Quinn's face showed the impact of a series of hammer blows, just as he'd intended. One more tap should do it. 'By the way, there's a great special on the History Channel this week. Would you like to watch it with me? It would go perfectly with a trip to the local museum.' He still pretended not to notice the look on Quinn's face, at the same time as he stored it away in his memory.

'Uh, I don't think so', Quinn stammered. 'I've got a lot of other things to do.' She looked down at her all-black outfit. 'In fact, I need to get changed in a hurry now, before I make some phone calls.' She started upstairs. Sonny began to follow her. She turned round and burst out at him. 'Look, you win, all right!' Then she raced out of sight. Sonny slowly went back to the living room and settled on the sofa with a book and a small sigh of concealed contentment.

At school the next day, Sonny was filling Jane in when Quinn, her black outfits abandoned, walked past with the rest of the Fashion Club. She was already disavowing the whole episode. Even the original essay, the one that started it all, she said she hadn't really written herself. The situation, according to Quinn's revised version, had spiralled out of control through no desire of hers. Her 'intellectual' phase was over. Sandi magnanimously welcomed her back into the fold, forgiving her past transgressions.

Sonny and Jane watched them down the hallway.

Jane said, 'Back to normal.'

'Fashion: good. Thinking: bad.'

'Victory.'

'I'm on top of the world.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Quinn The Brain' by Rachel Lipman<strong>_


	17. Admit Impediments'

**Not So Different**

_**17. 'Admit Impediments'**_

As soon as Sonny opened the front door to go in, he heard his mother on the phone. When he realised that she was talking to her older sister Rita he told Jane that was a good reason to make herself scarce. Jane nodded understandingly, sketched a farewell, and obligingly absquatulated.

Inside the house, Sonny gathered from his mother's end of the phone conversation, and then again from his father, and then again from his mother once she got off the phone, that Rita's daughter Erin was about to get married. On and off the phone his mother's voice had an airy tone he knew well; he didn't need his father's weather forecast to recognise the sign of turbulence ahead. His grandmother, Helen and Rita's mother, was going to pay for a wedding at an expensive resort, something which Helen interpreted as confirmation of her mother's favouritism for Rita and her daughter and thus, by the logic Helen always followed, a personal snub to her. As far as Sonny could tell, from his limited opportunities for observation, his mother had always resented her older sister and everything to do with her. He was _almost _sorry about missing the wedding (with its opportunities for further observation), and said so.

His mother disabused him. He and Quinn would have places in the wedding party. Her voice shifted to the tone of a mafia soldier confirming that a hit had been carried out as she said, 'I made sure of that.'

* * *

><p>'It won't be that bad', said Jane. 'Sure, you'll get your cheeks pinched by elderly relatives who think you're still six years old, but at least you won't have to wear a frilly peach-coloured dress that makes you look like a circus freak. I mean, more like a circus freak than you already do; you know, like the man with the iron face. Men's formal outfits are never as … as … Help me out here, you're the wordsmith.'<p>

'I don't know the exact word you want. Maybe "fantastical"?'

'Could be. Men's formal outfits are never as fantastical. Or something.'

'Well, I won't have to hang around for an hour and a half while Quinn forces some unfortunate to get every detail of her fitting arranged to her exacting notions, so that's a plus. I should be in and out of the hire shop in ten minutes. Speaking of which, here it is.' Sonny and Jane entered together, and then Jane waited while Sonny went into the fitting room. He was out again more quickly than she would have expected.

'So', he began again as soon as he emerged. 'I was in the middle of saying this. The way most people would look at it, we males do have an advantage here. Female formal wear is designed for display, which is fine if you're a supermodel or Quinn, but can be very unflattering for some women, whereas male formal wear is designed to be flattering to nearly any figure. But dressing up to make myself look good is something I don't do.'

'I think I get it', said Jane. 'The way you dress is part of the whole Sonny Morgendorffer thing. "Hi, I'm Sonny Morgendorffer. Go to hell." Only I can't make my voice as inexpressive as yours.'

'You mean like this?' Sonny said. 'I needs must go when the devil drives.' He turned to the assistant to confirm the hire arrangements, and in less than the ten minutes he'd predicted he and Jane were on their way again and he was continuing to explain to her. 'You see, if I were a girl, it's a safe bet that the dress wouldn't fit me properly, and I'd never have Quinn's ability to chivvy somebody into adjusting it just so. She's thrilled about the whole thing, by the way. I think she was half hoping the colour wouldn't suit her so she'd have an excuse to give our parents for getting her hair dyed. And if I were her sister instead of her brother I'd turn up at the wedding with her looking perfect just to underline how I didn't look right in the dress. So I'd be making the same symbolic statement I always do, that I'm not going to dress up to make myself look good. I just can't achieve that with a tuxedo.'

'This is the kind of thing you worry about? You're a twisted little cruller, aren't you? That's why I'm proud to be your friend.'

'Thanks.'

'And as a friend, I'm glad I came along today to witness your discomfort. I know you wouldn't want me to spare you by not confirming that you do look good in a tuxedo. Don't worry, five minutes talking with you will be enough to cancel the effect. Probably only three for most people.'

* * *

><p>In terms of actual hours, Sonny's mother didn't have a lot of contact with any of her family, the Barksdales—but the friction was so intense that the experience seemed much more life-consuming than it was when measured in objective time. On this occasion she had pointlessly made things worse by carrying on about it in advance during the car trip. Sonny had tried to blot out most of the details, but he'd got the gist. It had been the usual: bitchiness about Rita's poor record in choosing men (Sonny had to admit, though, that he liked his mother's reference to one of them being in 'some Federal facility') and complaints about the money being lavished on Rita's daughter's wedding when nothing was being done for the other grandchildren (Sonny and Quinn). Rita had always been the pretty one, Rita had always been the one their mother loved, Rita had never worked hard for anything, Helen had always worked hard, and what recognition had she ever had for it? none!<p>

When Rita welcomed them on arrival, she and Sonny's mother put on a show of sisterliness, but Sonny doubted they were even deceiving themselves. Rita had also complimented Sonny and Quinn on their appearance (Quinn had found a hair ribbon which—so she said—'worked perfectly' with both the dress and her hair, which she'd mercifully decided she didn't need to dye), but then she'd told Sonny that he needn't worry, 'any day now' he'd be sure to start a 'growth spurt'.

The first thing that really caught Sonny's attention was the arrival of his mother's younger sister, Amy. Looking at her he remembered his conversation with Jane about how he might appear if he were a girl. Maybe he'd look something like Amy. For one thing, she had hair of a very similar colour. It was a little darker than his, but he knew that his own hair had already darkened a little since he was a child and could be expected to do so a little more. But it was more than that—there was just something about her. He had an idea that she hated being in a formal dress the way he hated being in a tuxedo.

Rita gave Amy a welcome which Sonny suspected was as phoney as the one she'd given Helen. Apparently Amy hadn't been expected. Amy explained that she hadn't been intending to come, 'but I thought if you two could put aside years of bitterness and resentment, then so can I … for a day'.

'Oh, Amy', Helen said, 'why do you say such ridiculous things?'

'Out loud?' Amy walked past her sisters and congratulated Jake on the fortitude he demonstrated by remaining with Helen. Sonny concluded that she knew his mother well but not his father. Then she turned to Rita's latest, who had so far failed to make any impression on Sonny whatsoever. 'And Roger', she said. 'How's the skydiving going?'

Helen, with self-undermining tact, explained to Amy that this was in fact Paul, Roger having, as she insisted on putting it much too distinctly, 'passed away'. The Morgendorffers had all heard the story of Roger the skydiving instructor, but evidently Amy hadn't even been in contact that much. Amy apologised and greeted Paul politely.

'Who's Roger?' said Paul. He must not have heard the story either.

Quinn tittered nervously and explained. 'He fell onto a cow.'

Paul winced with disgust.

'And he was one of the lucky ones', Sonny said.

Helen remonstrated with him, but Amy said, 'Hey, what's the point of a senseless tragedy if you can't find a little humour in it? Sonny, I like the way you think.'

When the chronological adults had all gone inside, Quinn gave Amy what she did not intend to be a stamp of approval by describing her as 'really weird'. Sonny just nodded. Then he bowed to fate and followed Quinn inside. At least Amy might be somebody to share his lack of enjoyment with.

When they found their way to the wedding marquee, Quinn immediately showed her unerring ability to recognise the presence of her own kind and gravitated towards a gaggle of bridesmaids. Sonny sheered off to avoid them as long as possible and looked around helplessly. Then he noticed another hapless victim of the tuxedo leaning against one of the tent poles, staring not so much at anything as away. Sonny moved up and leaned against the other side of the pole. He wanted to fix the visual impression in his mind as a guide for future use of the word 'lugubrious'. The stranger gave him a welcome null acknowledgement. Two minutes of blessed silence passed, and then Quinn approached, with one of the other bridesmaids guiding her. 'Quinn', she said, gesturing at Sonny's non-companion, 'this is Luhrmann, who will be escorting you. And you must be Erin's other cousin, Jacob.'

'Actually', Sonny said, 'my father is Jake, Senior, and I'm Jake, Junior, so everybody calls me Sonny.'

'A pleasure to meet you, Sonny', the bridesmaid replied. She was like cotton candy: light, sweet, decorative, without nutritional value, and she made Sonny's teeth ache. 'My name is Daphne, and you will be my escort.'

'Of course', said Sonny.

Quinn greeted Luhrmann and asked whether he could get her a soda 'with just an eensy-weensy slice of lemon, please?'

'It's so rare today', Luhrmann said, without stirring to comply with Quinn's request, 'to find somebody who'll trust a person she's just met to fetch her a drink without spitting in it.'

Quinn made an exclamation of disgust. 'On second thoughts, never mind. I'm sure I can find somebody else to do it.'

Sonny said, mirroring Luhrmann's immobility as he spoke, 'It won't be me. You _know _that _I'd_ spit in your drink.'

This time Quinn and Daphne went 'Eww!' in chorus. Then Daphne suggested Quinn come with her to get drinks and the two went off together.

'You're her escort and I'm her brother', said Sonny. 'We have an agony in common.'

'Should I show you where we can get a soda? or shall we just split a bottle of drain cleaner?' Sonny had the rare experience of being unable to control his reaction, a stare which was the equivalent for him of another person's full body recoil. Luhrmann continued in the same leaden voice as ever, 'Please be assured that my remark was intended in jest, and not as an incitement to any type of self-destructive behaviour.'

'You don't come from the same place as these other people, do you?' After a short silence, Sonny continued, 'You know about my name. What's the story with yours? Does Luhrmann come first or last?'

'Do you care?'

'Agreed. No more pointless chit-chat.' After another easy silence of two or three minutes, Sonny said 'What would you do if you had a sister like her? I could use any suggestions, bearing in mind that at my age I can be tried as an adult.'

They were denied the pleasure of further discussion of this engaging topic because at this point they were rounded up with the rest of the wedding party to take their places for the ceremony, something which Sonny could in no way regard as engaging. As the proceedings rambled on he guessed that Luhrmann, standing next to him, must have somehow developed the same knack that experience had given Sonny himself, of defocusing his attention so that he took in only the necessary minimum of what was going on. Certainly Luhrmann's face, like his own, gave no sign of any pleasure (he doubted Luhrmann's face was capable of showing pleasure) but also no sign of a mind-numbing gut-wrenching desire to end an agony of tedium with a burst of full-automatic weapon fire possibly supplemented by a few Molotov cocktails. A moment later it occurred to him that he might have an idea there for a Lyric Lightbody story. _In what circumstances_, he pondered, _would Lyric Lightbody be here at this wedding, primed for carnage and loaded for bear, and mutant sabretooth giant cave bear at that? _Detaching for a moment from his surroundings, he let his mind float free, trying to catch an updraft of inspiration. _Let's say somebody here is a double agent, a mole, a traitor. We've run a successful disinformation operation and convinced the other side—whoever they are this week, not that Lyric would care—that the double agent is a triple agent, really loyal to us all along. Lyric's expecting an expert enemy assassin to attempt a liquidation: her job is to watch the target and take out the assassin first, so that the traitor's cover is blown and he or she has no option but to come back over to us for protection and give up to us the information we want. But the enemy agent could be anybody … the bride … the best man … one of the relatives … one of the waiters … the photographer … suddenly she realises that it's not just one assassin, it's a whole hit team, a dozen of them, and they couldn't care less about civilian casualties … she has to take out all of them … blood-spattered decorations, somebody's brains leaking onto the centrepiece, total clash with the wedding planner's designs, all the wrong colours …_

Thinking about his surroundings led Sonny's perceptions to drift back a little closer to contact with them. He decided that if he wanted to write the story effectively he'd need to be able to visualise the surroundings clearly, and the present ones would make as good a model as any other, so he looked around, trying to fix an image of the layout in his mind. When he looked sideways he saw that all the bridesmaids were tearing up, except for Quinn, in a rapturous trance, who would never let herself risk a puffy face in public. He should scan all the way around. Rita was wiping her eye, Paul was drowsing, Helen was—waving angrily at him to look forward again, Jake was cleaning wax out of his ear with a fingertip, and Amy—was pulling a face at him! He muffled an involuntary snort of laughter, but it didn't go unheard. He could see the reaction on the best man and one or two others. He knew the meaning of that tightening of the muscles of the face, the shoulder, the wrist: it said as plain as skywriting, 'I want to hit Sonny Morgendorffer'. Oh great.

Between him and the angry men Luhrmann was a statue.

He would have to hope that being at a wedding would inhibit violence. And it wouldn't do any harm to keep an eye out for any continuing hostile looks, and the movements of anybody bearing a grudge. In a way he'd be getting some practice at seeing the world through Lyric Lightbody's eyes.

One thing he knew from experience was where the point of greatest vulnerability lay. It would be very difficult to get through the whole reception without relieving himself at least once, and when he did that he'd be wide open to a shot from—probably from the best man, he thought. It was looking as if the others might forget about it without too much difficulty. Maybe the best man had a bigger grudge because he secretly fancied Daphne? Or he might just be a natural bully. The reasons didn't really matter; whatever the case, Sonny was going to keep watching him until he was sure the man had decided to let the matter drop.

Being in the wedding party meant that for the reception he was seated at the same top table as the best man, but it was a big table and they weren't near each other. Daphne was next to him, of course, and then Luhrmann on the other side of Daphne. Theoretically Quinn was seated with Luhrmann, but she was shrewd in making assessments according to her own scale of standards. She had summed up Luhrmann just as accurately as Sonny had done and decided to cut her losses. Now she was spraying her charm around the room in search of fresh conquests.

Sonny had just seen the best man tied down by social interaction, leaving Sonny the opportunity he needed to break for the bathroom, when Erin and her new husband approached for the conventional greeting ritual. Erin made a conventional ritual fuss about not having seen Sonny before the wedding. Sonny saw nothing meriting any kind of remark in somebody's not seeing him. Erin was starting to introduce Brian when Sonny got up and explained that he had to go to the …

'Little boys' room?' offered Brian, with a grin that Sonny didn't like the look of at all.

'Yes, I am such a little one', Sonny said. 'But Aunt Rita says I'm sure to start a growth spurt any day now. Excuse me, I really have to go, I'm on a schedule here.' He gestured along the table. 'I'm sure Luhrmann here will take care of you for me in my absence.' As he started to leave, a non-expression of perfect understanding passed between him and Luhrmann. He heard Luhrmann's voice unraised behind him as he sped off, and felt sure he was scoring at Brian's expense. He suspected Brian was just the type to have a natural bully for a best man, so he hustled. Near his destination he passed the clergyman talking to Quinn. He also caught sight of Aunt Amy heading for the same destination he was, or rather the corresponding one. Too bad he couldn't take safety alongside her. However, he managed to complete his business safely and then get out of the danger zone as quickly as possible. Emerging into the open again, he found the clergyman still addressing Quinn. He paused beside them, thinking that he'd probably be safe in that position while he scanned the room for any further threat. With half an ear he realised that the man had the bad taste, or at any rate the superficiality, to be spinning a pick-up line for Quinn. Had he been a different kind of older brother, he might have wanted to defend her, but for that to have happened she would have had to have been a different kind of younger sister. Anyway, this was the sort of situation Quinn would have no trouble handling however she wanted to.

He didn't want to look like an eavesdropper, though.

'Hi, Quinn', he said. 'Hi, Father.'

'I'm not a priest, I'm a minister.'

'Please excuse me. Which denomination do you belong to? And what's their position on the age of responsibility?' As he continued to speak, he saw out of the corner of his eye that Amy was coming out of the women's toilets and heading back towards the dining room, which would take her past them. 'Come to think of it, what's the law on statutory rape in this State? We're not locals. But I shouldn't ask you questions like that, should I? You're not a lawyer any more than you're a priest. What's important is that you're the voice of morality in the community.' Before either Quinn or the minister could react he excused himself to join Amy. He thought he could see an opportunity to get safely back across the room, and it wouldn't hurt being accompanied.

'Sarcasm', Amy said as they walked together. She had obviously heard him speaking to the minister. 'It's a great way to deal.'

'Deal?' said Sonny. 'What is there to deal with? I'm overjoyed to be at this big family event.'

'Then you know exactly how I feel. You know, when I was your age I thought that by the time I was thirty I'd be past all this.'

'Huh. Do you think life is always tawdry, stupid, and humiliating?'

'I think it's just a phase.' Amy shrugged. 'I'll let you know when I grow out of it.'

'Thanks', Sonny said. He saw and took a chance to duck back into his seat unobstructed, while his aunt made her way back to her own table.

'Did I miss anything?' he said to Luhrmann as he edged past him.

'Do you know what the bridegroom does? I thought I heard somebody say something about intelligence, but that can't be right.' From Luhrmann's remark, Sonny deduced that Brian must be at least as bad as he looked. He was grateful once again to have avoided the best man, or any of Brian's other friends, if he had any.

Daphne started trying to make small talk with Sonny as he took his seat again. Maybe she thought that was her role as his escort. Or maybe she thought his role as her escort was to rescue her from having Luhrmann as her only conversational partner. He got the feeling that she had found him uncongenial company during Sonny's absence. She was surely far too conventional to have enjoyed listening to him making snide remarks about the groom.

'So how are you related to Erin, Sonny?'

'I'm not. I'm a private investigator working undercover. I know you're clean, Daphne, and I know I can trust you. Have you seen anybody doing anything that looked suspicious to you? Your observations could be valuable to me. This is a big case. Don't react too obviously and give me away.'

'Wow. I haven't seen anything yet, but I'll keep my eyes peeled. Are you really old enough to be a private investigator? That's amazing.'

Sonny looked around the room the way he imagined Lyric Lightbody doing. 'I'm heavily disguised. I'm actually a twenty-four-year-old woman.' He felt that this would add credibility to his story.

'She's really very good at what she does', said Luhrmann. 'I helped to organise for her to work on this job.' Sonny glanced at him for a moment. What a truly remarkable face!

As Sonny continued spinning stories for Daphne, other bridesmaids clustered around. He refused to say anything more about his current case ('I may have said too much already'), but it wasn't hard to invent others, and they seemed ready to swallow anything. He told them about one case where he'd had to go undercover as an exotic dancer ('for strange men … and even stranger women') and, when that didn't strain their credulity, another one that had involved the aliens living under the North Pole, as invented by Jane in a bedtime story for the Gupty children.

Eventually one of the bridesmaids asked whether all the stories were true.

'No', said Sonny. 'None of it was true. I made it all up. I've never worked as an exotic dancer, I've never had Special Forces training, I'm not a private investigator, I'm a tenth-grade boy and not a twenty-four-year-old woman, and there are no aliens under the North Pole. The real reason I'm here is to test an experimental device implanted in my brain and designed to attract gullible women.'

Luhrmann added, 'And I'm here to witness that it's a success.'

The bridesmaids conferred briefly in an undertone and then one of them announced that they weren't going to talk to Sonny any more.

'You need help', said another bridesmaid, before they departed in a group.

Luhrmann said, 'Well, duh.'

Now that the bridesmaids were no longer occupying his attention, it occurred to Sonny that they might have been screening him from trouble. He scanned the room again. He saw no menace to himself, but he noticed that his mother was drunk. She was swaying from side to side and talking loudly, although he couldn't quite make out the words. As his father tried unsuccessfully to quiet her, Paul, Rita, Erin, and Brian arrived at the table in quick succession, and promising signs of an ugly scene developed. Then he sensed that somebody was behind his chair and quickly swung round, but it was only Aunt Amy.

'Things are getting ugly', she said. 'I suggest we make a hasty but unobtrusive exit.'

Sonny was happy to go along with that plan. Any sort of ruckus would be a context in which he was vulnerable. And Amy (who by this stage had told him not to call her 'Aunt' Amy) offered to find a place where she could buy him cheese fries. He explained the plan to Luhrmann.

'Oh, sure, throw me to the wolves', Luhrmann said.

With a glance at Amy, Sonny invited him to join them but Luhrmann preferred to stay and 'watch the carnage unfold'.

'In that case, let me know how things turn out', Sonny said, handing Luhrmann a scrap of paper on which he'd just scrawled his email address. 'And if misfortune ever brings you to Lawndale, get in touch. I'd introduce you to my friend Jane. She's always looking for interesting subjects for portraits.' They shook hands and then he followed Amy out, passing the table where the quarrel between Helen, Rita, and the others was intensifying.

Amy told him not to look. 'There's nothing you can do for these people now', she told him supererogatorily. Then they passed an actual fistfight, between the minister and the best man. Sonny congratulated himself on his escape. Quinn, evidently the occasion for the fight, was standing by and loving it.

In Amy's car, as she drove, Sonny asked whether she thought it likely that he and Quinn would still be fighting thirty years from now, the way his Mom and Aunt Rita were.

'By now', Amy said, 'they're probably more than halfway to a drunken reconciliation. It depends whether the booze ends up making them more aggressive or more maudlin. They may end up telling each other how much they love each other—until they're sober again, and Helen remembers again how Dad gave Rita an MG and she only got a Dodge Dart.'

Sonny pondered. 'I _really _hope Quinn and I never have a drunken reconciliation.'

'Well, when you're legally an adult you'll find you have more choices. You'll notice I didn't hang around for the ending.'

'You know, Amy, you're kind of cool.'

'Isn't it against the law of the teenagers for you to say that to me?'

'Thank you for acknowledging it', said Sonny. 'But sometimes laws should be broken. Something tells me I can trust you not to drop a dime on me.'

After a little more driving, they found a restaurant that looked as if it would do. At the bar, they unexpectedly saw Brian, somehow there ahead of them. He must have known about this place already, not the best sign. He reacted to their appearance as if they'd been sent to get him to go back, and responded as a surly drunk. Sonny steered well clear. He was now convinced that the wedding had been a near miss for him and didn't want trouble to catch up with him afterwards.

As they sat down, Amy said, 'I suppose you want to know what your mother was like as a child.'

Sonny acquiesced in the suggestion.

'A tightly wound pain in the ass.'

Sonny said, 'New topic?'

'Name it.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'I Don't' by Peter Gaffney and 'Through A Lens, Darkly' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	18. Selling Out

**Not So Different**

_**18. Selling Out**_

Sonny knew that his parents had been part of 'the movement' in the 1960s. They'd lived in a group house with like-minded young people, they'd mobilised and protested, and they'd believed in causes: voluntary simplicity, civil rights, feminism, environmentalism, pacifism, or at least that was the general flavour—there was a lot he didn't know. They still did believe in the same sort of things, in theory, sometimes, a bit, when they didn't interfere with their new roles: his mother a lawyer at a corporate law firm with seven named partners, her greatest passion to be one of them; his father a marketing consultant, his greatest passion for golf. But they had bad consciences. The occasional passing reference to his father's presence at Altamont aside, there was a big chunk of their past they were embarrassed to talk about, like a tie-dyed skeleton in a closet that Sonny had never been able to penetrate. The way they hid that history made him sure he could find a use for it.

None of this came to Sonny's mind when he walked into the kitchen and found his mother standing on a stool and rummaging in the top shelf of an overhead cabinet. His first guess was that she was hiding something from his father: alcohol, coffee, sugar, chilli flakes, or maybe something with whatever food additive was the subject of the latest scare story linking it to ADHD. But his first guess was wrong. All his guesses would have been wrong. She was looking for a long-abandoned breadmaker. The Yeagers, friends Jake and Helen had not seen for twenty-five years, were coming to stay for the weekend. And, as Sonny's mother explained it to him, they remembered her as a different Helen, a Helen who made her own bread, 'famous for her oatmeal pumpkin seed loaf'. Sonny asked her just what she had done with this other Helen, but before she could answer a car horn announced the Yeagers' arrival.

Helen fretted about what the Yeagers would think of her.

'Just be yourself', Sonny said. 'That's what you've always told me.'

'I could kick myself for that', his mother replied, in one of those rare outbursts of candour that made Sonny feel almost close to her.

The whole family went outside to welcome the Yeagers. Quinn didn't recognise their Volkswagen Beetle. Sonny told her that it was not a car but a time machine, and when the Yeagers emerged from it they too looked as if they'd come through a time warp. Their clothes looked a little as if they'd got them from a thrift shop but more as if they'd been rejected by one. Sonny was prepared to believe that they'd been wearing the same outfits since the 1960s—not just the same look but the same actual garments.

The Morgendorffer parents greeted the Yeagers. The Yeagers' given names—or perhaps self-given—were Willow and Coyote. All four seemed excited at the reunion, but Sonny reserved judgment on how deep the sincere emotion ran. Coyote and Jake engaged in a complex hand-clasping ritual of some kind, which gave them something to do without having to find a verbal definition of their feelings. Sonny found the women's greetings linguistically interesting. Helen told Willow that she hadn't changed—sounding pleasant, but objectively ambiguous. Willow's reply was 'Just look at you!' which wasn't even a statement.

The Yeagers' dog provided another topic of conversation: apparently this was the third German shepherd in a row named after Timothy Leary, looking just like the one the Morgendorffers remembered. Then Helen introduced Quinn and Sonny (in that order; of course). Willow clasped Sonny's hands and told him he had a very old soul. Sonny suggested that she was being misled by a false contrast with the apparent youth of his body, which was simply late maturing. Unfazed, Willow returned to her husband and the senior Morgendorffers. Sonny and Quinn both wanted to get away, but Sonny suggested to Quinn that if one of them stayed, it could be an opportunity to learn more about their parents.

Quinn said, 'Why would we want to do that?'

'To use against them later. Twenty bucks if you dig up some dirt.'

Quinn was unpersuaded until the last of the Yeager household emerged from the Volkswagen. Not another animal, a teenage boy, but judging from the look on Quinn's face she wouldn't mind having him as a pet.

'You said twenty, right?' she asked Sonny.

* * *

><p>When Sonny wanted to get away, he went to the Lane house. He told Jane all about the Yeagers ('they wear strange clothes, they talk a lot about peace and love, and I'm not talking about Trekkies'). Then Jane took him upstairs to see Trent and Jesse experimenting with musical effects. Trent had become fascinated by Jesse's parents' collection of old vinyl LPs, which Jesse was supposed to sell for them at the flea market, and he was comparing them with the same music on CDs.<p>

Jane asked whether they'd need any help at the flea market. Jesse said they'd have to be there by seven o'clock to set up.

'No problem', said Jane. 'Sonny's an early bird.'

Sonny twitched. As Trent tried another experiment, involving the 'polarity' of the plug, whatever that meant, Sonny pulled Jane aside.

'Does this constitute an invitation to stay over?'

'Sure, why not?' said Jane. 'Unless you'd rather rush back to swap yogurt recipes with the Yeagers.'

Sonny shrugged. 'Maybe you should ring my mom to ask whether it's all right. Maybe even better if you can get Trent to do it.'

Jane looked at him quizzically. 'If you think so.'

'We'll see what happens', Sonny said. 'I may be wrong, although that hasn't happened often lately.'

'What?'

'Just see if Trent will make the call.'

Jane turned to her brother. 'Hey, Trent. Can you call the Morgendorffers and tell them that Sonny's invited to stay over?'

Trent was as relaxed as ever. Sonny and Jane stood by as he made the call.

Of course Quinn answered the phone first. Trent got her to fetch a parent.

'Hey, Mrs Morgendorffer. This is Trent. Trent Lane, Jane's brother. We met that time when we brought Sonny home.'

_So far so good_, Sonny thought.

'We'd like to invite Sonny to stay over so he can come with us to the flea market tomorrow morning early.'

_Now we get to it_, thought Sonny.

Trent made noises acknowledging whatever Sonny's mother was saying. Then he moved the receiver away from him and turned to Jane. 'Do you remember where Mom and Dad are?'

'Isn't it somewhere in the US this month? I think it was one of those States that starts with M.'

Trent brought the phone back to his mouth. 'They're not around at the moment, Mrs Morgendorffer.' He listened briefly and then held out the phone to Sonny. 'Your mom would like to speak with you.'

Sonny took the phone. 'Hi, mom.'

'Sonny, I hope you understand why I'm not comfortable with you staying over with Jane.'

'With Trent and Jane, mom.'

'I know, but what about their parents? I have to think about them too, Sonny. If I could discuss this with them maybe it would be different, but … You and Jane are only teenagers, Sonny. And Trent's a pleasant young man, and I'm grateful to him for helping you that time, but he's not Jane's parent. I think it's best if you come home now. You can get to know our friends! We'd all like that, wouldn't we?'

Sonny heaved a soundless sigh and acquiesced. Then he hung up the phone.

'Thanks, but I have to go home now.'

Trent was still relaxed. 'You can still come over tomorrow to help us out if you want to. Or you could just meet us at the flea market later. Or whenever. We can leave it loose.' He headed back to his room.

Jane walked Sonny to the door. Sonny said, 'You're so used to being a Lane that you forget what other people's parents are like. I could have predicted my mother's reaction. Still, thanks for trying.'

'What did she say?'

'It's not so much the words as what was behind them. She didn't actually say "hormones running wild, teenagers out of control, young loins are hot", but she might as well have.'

'She really doesn't know the same Sonny Morgendorffer I know, does she?'

'No, she really doesn't', Sonny said. 'And so I have to go home and get to know the Yeagers, and eat my mother's home-made oatmeal and pumpkin-seed loaf.'

'At least it'll make a change from microwaved lasagna.'

'You know _exactly _the same Helen Morgendorffer I know.' Sonny stopped in the doorway. 'I suppose there is one consolation in spending some time with my parents around the holdover hippies. I might find out more about the Jake and Helen Morgendorffer I don't know. Were they more the protest outside the Pentagon types, or more the spiritual quest in the desert types?' He shrugged his shoulders. 'And if I find the Yeagers hard to take, I'll imagine them floating away in the night because my mother's forgotten to tether them to their beds.'

* * *

><p>Sonny got home to discover that his mother had arranged for him to share his bedroom with Ethan, the Yeagers' son. (<em>Why<em>, Sonny wondered, _is he called Ethan, and not Hemp, or Hummingbird, or Adobe?_) Ethan had already fallen asleep in Sonny's bed, leaving Sonny to take the sleeping bag on the floor. As he did so, he reflected on the fact that his mother evidently had no objection to the sharing of a bedroom by a same-sex pair of teenagers. He wondered, just before falling asleep, whether it was solely because she wouldn't have to worry about the possibility of either of them falling pregnant.

Whether it was the mattress on the floor or the presence of somebody else in his bedroom (something he had thought he'd been freed of once he and Quinn got separate rooms), Sonny slept fitfully. He woke a couple of times in the small hours only to fall back into a doze each time and was finally woken for good by Ethan stumbling _back _to bed, announcing that he'd only got up by mistake because he thought it was already lunch time. Sonny dressed himself and went down to breakfast.

'Hey, Sonny!' his father said. 'How do you like my new look?'

'Excuse me?' said Sonny. 'Have we met before? I'm sorry, you don't look familiar. Oh, wait! Is that you, Mr Yeager? Are you trying on some of my dad's clothes?'

'You're kidding, right?' said Jake unconfidently, and then more confidently, 'That's my son! He's a great kidder! Isn't he a great kidder?' He gave Sonny a shoulder-punch.

'Of course I know it's you, Dad', Sonny said. 'Mr Yeager has a moustache.'

'Yeah, but I've started growing my whiskers again! What do you think?'

'Is that what that is? I thought your face was just dirty.'

'You know what I should do! I should find my old jugglers' balls and teach you to juggle! I bet it's like riding a bike and you never forget how.'

Sonny shook his head and explained that he was already committed to joining Jane and Trent at the flea market, and after he'd had breakfast he asked whether he could get a ride there. As he might have foreseen, the Yeagers became very excited about the idea of a flea market. Unfortunately for them, their car was in need of some work. The upshot was that Sonny's mother arranged to go to the flea market with Willow (giving Sonny a ride there) while Sonny's father helped (to use the term loosely) Coyote to fix the Volkswagen. Sonny explained carefully that he was going to help his friends with their stall, and that they'd give him a ride home afterwards, so his mother and Willow should amuse themselves looking around and leave whenever they were ready. His mother accepted this on the strict condition that he be home in time for dinner, which Sonny grudgingly conceded.

When they arrived at the flea market, Helen insisted on first escorting Sonny to his stall. 'Oh look', she said, 'Jane's got a customer.'

'That's not a customer', said Sonny. 'That's Up … I mean, that's Chuck Ruttheimer.'

Willow wanted to know whether this was another friend. Sonny acknowledged only 'classmate'. When they reached the stall, he said, 'Excuse me … _Chuck_. You're not out and about indulging your passion for photography? Did somebody get a restraining order?'

Upchuck glanced at the adults. 'Excuse me, ladies. I have allowed myself to become distracted by Ms Lane. I must continue my quest.'

When he was gone, Sonny's mother greeted Jane and introduced Willow. Sonny identified Jane as his friend, and the two sleepers—for such they were—as Jane's brother Trent and Trent's friend Jesse. After a brief observance of the amenities, Willow dragged Sonny's mother away to examine other stalls.

Sonny walked around the folding table to join Jane inside the stall, pausing to inspect Trent. 'What's the story with these two? Have you checked that they haven't stopped breathing?'

'They decided that staying up all night was easier than getting up early.'

'And what's the story with Upchuck? Not that his pestering any female requires special explanation.'

'He's here looking for some stupid collectible, but he was about to offer me a lesson in salesmanship when you arrived and got rid of him.'

'Any competent scarecrow could have done the same. Speaking of which, did you notice Mr DeMartino at the next stall?'

Jane nodded. 'Did you see what that guy's selling, speaking of stupid collectibles? Imagine how much business it'll pull in for us, being next to him.'

Sonny took another look. 'Patriotic toilet seat covers. Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt … I wonder whether he has Harding?' Then he noticed that he'd unintentionally caught DeMartino's attention and that the teacher was approaching, obviously about to speak to them.

'Well, Sonny Morgendorffer. And Jane Lane. What do you make of this historical display?' He gestured at the toilet seat stall. 'The proprietor has rejected FDR as a socialist.' Sonny couldn't tell whether DeMartino was expressing solidarity or contempt. His strange manner of hoarsely accenting apparently random words or syllables was as rampant outside school as in. Presumably he found both parts of his life unsatisfactory, which might explain why he found browsing the flea market a palatable alternative. When he found out what they were selling, he expressed an interest in Annette Funicello records, but they couldn't find any for him, so he moved on to another stall to look at magazines.

By then, Trent and Jesse had returned to full consciousness. Jane suggested that they could take a turn looking after the stall while she and Sonny visited the food court.

As they walked, Jane asked Sonny whether he was still glad to be avoiding the Yeagers.

'You saw what Willow was like', Sonny said. 'She's the sort of person who enjoys flea markets, instead of fleeing them as the name recommends.'

'I'll tell you my theory about that. Our primitive hunting instinct has no outlet in modern society.'

Sonny shook his head. 'Not true for the Upchucks of this world.'

'Well, for most people, we substitute the shopping experience, and hunt for objects.'

'That would explain Quinn and the Fashion Club. Maybe the Yeagers deserve some credit. At least they're not in a constant materialistic consumer frenzy.'

While they sat and ate, Jane asked Sonny whether the Yeagers' visit had helped him in his efforts at finding out more about his parents' past, and he told her some of the things that had happened.

'I think my parents are still embarrassed at letting on too much in front of their old friends', he said. 'Willow and Coyote seem to remember them as much mellower people.'

'Mellow?' said Jane. 'Helen? Jake?'

Sonny made a helpless gesture. 'I know. Anyway, it seems the Yeagers have spent the last twelve years selling hammocks they make themselves out of hemp. It's an absolute certainty that my parents prefer the careers they've chosen to anything like that—thank goodness—but I don't think they want to come out and say as much.'

Jane's mind had moved on a different path. 'Hemp?'

Sonny shrugged. 'My parents still don't want to give a hint of anything that would undermine the "Just Say No" party line, and I suspect the Yeagers will avoid tripping them up on that because they've got a teenage son of their own.'

'What's he like?'

'Attractive to Quinn. She's eager to get him to herself for her own purposes, but I'm hoping she'll also be able to get him to pass on some of his parents' more unguarded reminiscences, to provide some inside dirt on ours.'

By this time they'd finished eating, so they returned to the stall to spell Trent and Jesse, who were ready for their turn at the food court. Sonny amused himself by developing an anti-sales pitch. (After the third time he told a customer that the records were mysterious discs left by aliens, Jane made a sarcastic comment about his positive attitude to working with the public. 'I shouldn't have asked you to help with anything that involved contact with people, should I?' she said.) Nevertheless, between the four of them they managed a sales aggregate that avoided total disgrace. Some people wanted the records so badly they couldn't be discouraged.

At the end of the day, Sonny and Jane helped Trent and Jesse pack up for the ride home, a task which would have been quicker if they'd managed to sell more of the records. As they dropped Sonny off at the Morgendorffer house, he said to Jane, 'It looks as if I've missed another meal with the Yeagers.'

'Were you supposed to be home for dinner? Sorry about that.'

'Don't be. Look, here comes Quinn with Yeager Junior. I have to see whether she got any juicy information from him. See you later.' He waved goodbye as the van drove off and then dashed over to Quinn and Ethan.

Ethan gave Sonny a vague greeting and then Quinn pulled him aside for a moment and said in an undertone, 'You said twenty dollars, right?'

'If the information's any good.'

'Ethan took me out to eat, but he didn't have any money, so can we say twenty dollars and expenses?'

'Like I said, it depends on what I get for it.'

'You want to hear about Mom punching out a cop?'

Sonny pulled out his wallet without another word and exchanged cash for the notebook Quinn was holding. He leafed through it quickly before they went inside and saw months of invaluable leverage.

All four parents were sitting round the dining table. Helen said, 'Sonny, Quinn, I expected you for dinner. Before I officially ground you, would you care to account for your whereabouts?'

'Sure', Sonny lied, before opening up his trove of goodies. 'But first, a few questions. Number one: why did you and Dad spend a night in jail in Boulder in August 1969?'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'That Was Then, This Is Dumb' by Anne D Bernstein<strong>_


	19. Truth Meets Power Both Lose

**Not So Different**

_**19. Truth Meets Power; Both Lose**_

As so often, it was mainly Mr O'Neill's fault. It had been bad luck that a thunderstorm started just after Sonny and Jane met him when they were all three on the way out of the movie theatre. They wouldn't have accepted his offer of a ride home otherwise. Once in the car he started talking about movies, and Sonny found he had to make _some _response. Whatever it was he said, it was all the excuse O'Neill needed to blame Sonny for his latest brainwave of assigning their class to movie-making teams.

Sonny and Jane's first effort was to take the camcorder they had borrowed from Sonny's father and fix it in a tree to film everybody that went past. According to Jane, this would provide a totally objective point of view. After a few minutes of nothing at all happening—except some leaves rustling—even Jane was having second thoughts (Sonny had been dubious from the beginning, but had suppressed his doubts in deference to Jane's greater artistic expertise). They agreed they'd have to have a script.

This meant, of course, that Sonny would write the script, with Jane contributing some improvised dramaturgy: 'I'd really like to be in a scene where I'm walking a poodle', she said, which was not much help to Sonny when he was drawing his main inspiration from existentialism. His next idea was to dispense with troublesome live actors, and they tried experimenting with puppet theatre in Jane's bedroom. Sonny's confidence collapsed when Trent walked by, saw what they were doing, heard the puppets' Sartrean dialogue, and chuckled at it. Sonny abandoned his scripted view that hell is other people; 'on second thought, hell is myself', he said. They decided to adjourn to the Morgendorffer house in the hope that the change of scene might facilitate fresh inspiration.

After sitting for several uninspiring minutes either looking at each other or looking away from each other, Jane asked Sonny a question.

'This whole existential thing? Didn't you say something about defining our own meaning in life?'

'That's a big part of it.'

'I guess none of those big-name existentialist thinkers remembered what it's like at high school.'

'You mean how we're letting O'Neill define our meaning for us?'

Jane nodded. 'Exactly. That doesn't sound like the Sonny Morgendorffer I know. Did you let Bennett define your meaning for you on that excursion to the mall? Did you ever let Barch define your meaning?'

'I think you may be on to something.'

* * *

><p>'Principal Li, I just wanted to thank you again for agreeing to help us with this project', Jane said. 'When Mr O'Neill told us he was going to assign us to make a movie, we just knew we had to tell the Lawndale High story. But how could we tell that story without you, its star?'<p>

'I'm just pleased that you're both so keen to work on something which will honour … _Lawndale High_, and glad that I'm able to help you.'

Sonny suppressed a wince at the way Li always pronounced the name of the school. Then he explained to her that they'd already collected a lot of footage from interviewing various people, but hadn't yet decided how to edit it all together. 'However, we would like to show you this montage we've been experimenting with. Of course you're the one who's at the heart of the Lawndale High story, but we'll be using what other people say as the background, so it'll help if you're aware of the kind of thing …'

Jane interrupted. She'd been fiddling with the equipment while Sonny was talking, and now, she announced, they were ready to roll.

The first face to come up on the screen was Quinn's. Jane's voice could be heard 'interviewing' her (Sonny had been operating the camcorder).

'So this college prep course was organised through the school?'

Quinn nodded, preening and smiling for the camera, her hair bouncing. (Quinn had been thrilled at the idea of being on film, except that she had insisted on a condition that no use be made of any shots in which her pores were visible. Sonny remembered the feeling of relief that they weren't going to spend the whole movie looking at Quinn.) 'As far as I know, yes, that's right!'

'And the course instructor arranged to meet you privately and suggested that there might be a connection between scholarship opportunities and your talent at making out?'

Quinn's expression started to change, but before her answer could be heard, the film cut to a scene showing Jane holding up a Polaroid photo so that the camera could get a clear view of it. It showed a grotesquely obese woman unconscious on the floor of her home. Jane was saying, 'The woman clearly had serious health problems. There was no way I could sell her the school's fundraising chocolate with a clear conscience.'

The picture wobbled slightly as Sonny spoke. It had been tricky working both as interviewer and as camera operator, but it had helped that this whole scene had been one he'd scripted with Jane in advance. 'And did the school fully support your conscientious stand?' he said on the tape, which cut immediately to yet another scene.

Mrs Bennett was the next interview subject. This time Jane had been the camera operator and Sonny the interviewer. 'So, when the mall executives agreed to talk with your students as part of their field trip, they did not disclose to you that they intended to use the students as unwitting participants in an unpaid market research focus group?'

_Cut to … _Jane interviewing Sonny's parents …

'So you heard that both the PTA and the school board were discussing inappropriate use of the school as a venue for recruiting to dubious jobs? What did you hear about the financial benefit accruing to the school and plans for its expenditure?'

_Cut to … _Mr Pekowsky, Jane's math teacher, being interviewed by Sonny …

'I can't take any credit for the initial concept, but I recognise the great educational value in students of different ability levels collaborating on a special project, especially one they've chosen themselves. I was happy to provide the data required.'

Sonny asked, 'The identities of the teachers and students were masked?'

'Yes, the original proposal very properly stressed that. In principle they could be determined from the school's records, but—'

_Cut to … _Sonny interviewing Jodie Landon …

'You and Kevin Thompson were assigned by Ms Barch to work jointly on this project?'

'That's correct', Jodie said.

'And Ms Barch gave you a grade of A for the project and Kevin a D?'

'That's right.'

'And Ms Barch no longer holds a teaching position?'

_Cut to … _Jane interviewing Brittany Taylor …

'And Tommy Sherman was at the school as an official guest when he made this indecent suggestion to you?'

_Cut to … _Trent being interviewed by Sonny …

'Well, Tommy didn't show up to a lot of classes. I mean … the champion quarterback … you know …'

_Cut to … _Ms Defoe being interviewed by Jane …

'That's not quite right. I was assigned responsibility for selecting the posters for the state competition, but Timothy O'Neill was contest coordinator for the school.'

'But you're an art teacher and Mr O'Neill isn't?'

_Cut to… _Sonny interviewing Jane again , this time with her displaying her poster for the camera …

'And can you tell me what reception your poster got from the school?'

_Cut to … _Sandi Griffin being interviewed by Sonny …

'I believe it was one of my fellow-students, rather than one of the teachers, whom I have to thank for noticing my absence from the bus. Otherwise it's possible that I would have been left behind at the paintball range. Naturally my parents would have held the school responsible for this neglect.'

The montage ended with a black screen.

'Now', Sonny said, getting in before Li could make any response (and ignoring the look on her face), 'we understand that there's a lot to go over and you may want some time to think through it. In the meantime, we have another question which we'd like to canvass in our documentary.' As he spoke, Jane had set up to record and was now pointing the camcorder at Li. Sonny continued, 'We understand, of course, that you put a lot of effort into husbanding the school's limited resources and putting them to their best use, which is why it isn't possible for the school to make video recording equipment available to all the students who are assigned a project like this one. We're using my father's camcorder, for example. So what would you say are the implications of an assignment like this for students who aren't able to buy or borrow the expensive equipment required?'

* * *

><p>'So there'll be no requirement to submit the movie assignment after all, and nobody will be graded. And I'd like to apologise once again to any students who were distressed because their … uh … socioeconomic circumstances … created difficulties for them in … ah … accessing the … uh … facilities for film-making. It was insensitive of me to … ah …'<p>

Sonny couldn't stand any more of O'Neill's wittering. He raised his hand and O'Neill called on him with the air of somebody hoping for relief.

'This reminds me of the scene in _To Kill A Mockingbird_, where the new teacher unintentionally humiliates the poor boy who doesn't have any lunch. But she means well.'

'That's a very interesting observation, Sonny. Has anybody else read _To Kill A Mockingbird_?'

_I suppose that's the seed for our next project_, Sonny thought, _and I'll be blamed for it again._

_Good intentions._

_Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it._

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Monster' by Neena Beber<strong>_


	20. Not Kindred Spirits

**Not So Different**

_**20. Not Kindred Spirits**_

Jodie Landon was showing signs that she was beginning (just) to understand Sonny. When she wanted him to join the photography team for the school yearbook (of which she was editor), her first move was still the useless one of telling him that it would be fun and look good on his transcript, but when that naturally didn't work she had enough insight to suggest that his parents would probably bribe him to do it. He weakened. When he brought up the topic with his parents, however, their first offer was only cash and, importantly, not enough. Sonny feigned interest in using the yearbook experience as the basis for creating a web page—if only he had the necessary software; his parents took the bait. (They didn't need to know that he had no plans to remove the software from its shrink-wrap; unused, it could be exchanged for _Cannibal Fragfest _on CD-ROM.) The deal did mean, though, that Sonny had to show up at yearbook, and that was how he came to meet Ted DeWitt-Clinton, fresh face (in every sense) around Lawndale High and enthusiastic yearbook photo editor.

Sonny responded to everything with sarcasm, of course, but especially enthusiasm. Unfortunately, sarcasm was one of the many things that Ted was enthusiastic about. He was thrilled to identify the different figures of speech that Sonny deployed in its service, just as much as he was excited about Sonny's photos, which he compared to the style of Goya. Sonny had to conceal his ignorance of Goya until he had the opportunity to elicit enlightenment the next time he talked with Jane. Once Jane had explained about Goya ('death, destruction, brutality; you'd have made great pen-pals'), Sonny told her about Ted, reporting that he had never been to school before, his parents having educated him at home so far.

'Isn't that kind of cool?' Sonny said.

'I judge things by results', said Jane, 'so I would have to say … no.'

'Hey, sarcasm. You two would get along.'

'If he makes you join his cult, can I have your webpage software?'

'He doesn't belong to a cult', Sonny said, and went on to explain about the plan to get hold of _Cannibal Fragfest_, which Jane, too, preferred to webpage software (apparently, if Sonny could believe Jane, computer-simulated ultra-violence was the kind of thing Goya would have loved). He promised to play the game with her as soon as he got hold of it—assuming he survived the experience of working on the yearbook long enough to collect on his deal with his parents.

The next yearbook meeting did nothing to assuage Sonny's doubts on that point. This time when Sonny explained the effect he'd been aiming for with his photos, he found himself having to conceal his ignorance of Ovid, whom Ted assumed to have been one of his inspirations. Then Ted expressed his continued bizarre enthusiasm about being at what he insisted on calling a 'normal' school, although he was a little disappointed at the lack of recognition, in yearbook space, for activities like volunteering and charity fundraising. When he, towing Sonny in his wake, put the matter to Mr DeMartino, the teacher in charge of the yearbook, DeMartino was only too happy to make more space available by taking it away from sports and clubs. Every other student on yearbook was against the idea, but DeMartino just deflected the blame onto Ted and Sonny. Sonny was dismayed. Was everybody at the school turning into a version of O'Neill?

But then Kevin and Brittany let Sonny know that they were upset about taking space from sports and clubs. That was in its favour. And Quinn tried to tell Sonny that he couldn't be serious about the change of policy (the Fashion Club, of course, would be among the victims of the cuts). That was in its favour too. Sonny started to think that Ted might have a point. By the time Ted asked him to come over to the DeWitt-Clinton place to discuss more photo ideas for the yearbook, Sonny was almost feeling the unaccustomed stirring of interest.

The DeWitt-Clinton house was distinguished by the corn growing in the front yard. (Ted explained to Sonny that they grew the squash and beans in the back.) It was also full of things that Ted and his parents had made with their own hands (from authentic natural raw materials), making Sonny feel inadequate. But Ted thought that Sonny was the one who had something remarkable about him. Sonny couldn't think what it might be. Was it just that Ted lacked experience of ordinary teenagers? (He'd never watched television; he'd never heard of the Beatles. What could his parents possibly have against the Beatles? Even the Yeagers must have listened to the Beatles.) To Sonny it was a completely ordinary gesture when he offered Ted a stick of gum, but Ted was naïvely enthusiastic even about gum—admittedly it was his first. Sonny could not remember ever facing a situation with such a sensation of being unequipped—hopelessly unequipped—to deal with it. Still, if Ted was a little weird, did that have to be a bad thing?

He expressed this view to Jane over lunch in the school cafeteria.

'A _little_ weird?' said Jane. 'He never had gum before! This is so cute! You have a new friend and he's a kook!'

'We're not friends exactly', Sonny said, just as Ted entered the room. 'It's not like you and me. Look, here he comes now. I'll introduce you and we'll see how cute that is.'

'Hi, Sonny!' Ted came up to their table. 'I was looking for you.' He held out a wooden box. 'I carved this for you, as thanks for the gum, and the Beatles cassette. It's a keepsake box. You could keep gum in it too, or your favourite cassettes, or any small items you wanted to store safely.'

'That's a beautiful piece of work.' Jane smiled sunnily at Ted. 'It's a really nice thing to make for a friend.' Sonny didn't know whether Ted could detect the subtle emphasis on the last word, but he could, and he knew Jane meant him to. _Well, two can play at that kind of game_, he thought, _and one of them's the expert._

'Ted, this is my friend Jane', he said. 'She's an artist. I'm sure she'd be interested in your ideas about photos for the yearbook.

'Hi, Jane! Say! why don't you come and work on photos for yearbook too?'

'If I have to fit in with the school's ideas it interferes with my artistic freedom. I did some artwork for a school competition not long ago and the school didn't like it. Sonny helped me with that project, and he was the one who helped me understand the problems with the school interfering. But you and Sonny seem to be working well together without problems.'

_My move again_, thought Sonny. 'As you're the photo editor for yearbook, Ted, I think it's good for you to get ideas and feedback from different sources. Jane doesn't have to come and work on yearbook herself if she doesn't want to. The two of you could meet and talk over ideas, and then afterwards you could discuss them with me at yearbook.'

Jane took Sonny by surprise. 'Okay', she said. 'Ted, how'd you like to get a slice of pizza after school?'

'Pizza sounds great!' said Ted. He continued to beam undimmed as he added, 'Pizza … what's it mean?'

Because of Jane and Ted's—date? was it a date? was Jane dating Ted now?—well, because of whatever-it-was, and whatever else it might mean, Sonny walked home alone after school. Meanwhile, not because of anything Jane and Ted might be doing, but (as it emerged) because of what Sonny and Ted had been doing, Sonny's mother, father, and sister were all in the kitchen talking. Not that Sonny and Ted had been doing anything much, but apparently a lot more had been going on in some people's under-controlled imaginations. As Sonny came into the room they were saying something about 'a cult'. Sonny's mother turned to him and said, 'Who is Ted and why haven't you told us about him, and is he trying to get you to join a cult?'

After all these years, Sonny's family had not lost the capacity to amaze him. He heard the exclamation 'Oh brother' escape from his teeth.

Sonny's father started ascending his spiral of overreaction. 'He calls himself "Brother"? You mean, like "Brother Ted"?'

'No', said Sonny fatalistically. _First Jane and now this?_ 'Like "Oh brother, you're all crazy." Ted is just somebody I work with on yearbook—something which, if I remember correctly, you were keen for me to be involved in. That's all, nothing more. And he's odd, but he's not in a cult.' Knowing that there was no point in saying anything more, he left the room.

He knew his family well enough to be sure that wasn't the end of it. Obviously Quinn (still stirred up by the yearbook policy change) had talked, and once she got started she wouldn't stop (and there was no shortage of facts about Ted's flakiness for her to repeat). And his parents (or at least his mother, which was what counted) wouldn't stop worrying about Ted just because _he _told them there was nothing to worry about. He spent a few days waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it came, he recognised it, but it was something he wouldn't have predicted.

He reconstructed his parents' reasoning in a flash. They were worried about what they imagined to be Ted's influence on him. They'd always been worried about his not having friends, they wanted him to have friends, but not ones who were members of weird cults. Solution: divert his attention from Ted to some other friend. So …

'It's been a while since we've seen Jane', Sonny's mother said, as the family sat around the dinner table. 'I feel bad because we never really thanked her properly for that time she helped you home after that … incident. Maybe we should invite her over for dinner one night?'

_That's not too bad_, thought Sonny. _Still, can't let them think they're getting the upper hand … _'You know I would have managed by myself that night. Still, it would be a nice gesture if you want to invite her to dinner. Only Trent helped me that night as much as Jane, so I think the proper gesture would be to invite both of them.'

Mysteriously, it was Sonny's father who supported him enthusiastically, but his mother was acquiescent.

When Sonny later passed on the invitation to Jane, she looked at him sideways. 'What have you done to your parents?'

'I haven't done anything, it's Ted. He scares them and I like it. By the way, how are you getting on with him? Has he got you to join his cult yet? What did he think when he found out what pizza is?'

Jane ignored the 'cult' remark. 'He enjoyed it a lot. You know that look he gets on his face?'

'Beatific? I mean, like a saint who's just been told he's going to heaven?'

'That's the one. It'd be perfect for a religious painting, but that sort of thing's not my style. And we had a good talk about photos for the yearbook.' Jane paused.

'That photo of the girl who fell off the uneven bars in gym? That was one of yours, wasn't it? Ted said he could really feel the pain. He was showing it to me when the angry mob burst in.'

'An angry mob? I wish I'd been there to photograph _that_.'

'Oh, it was only some of our … _fellow-students_, if you'll forgive the expression. They're still upset about having the yearbook pages taken away from sports and clubs. But Ted turned out to have more to him than they bargained for … or than I did, to be honest. He distracted the Fashion Club with a story about a sale at Cashman's and got them to run off in a panic in case it finished before they got there. That's a strategic move I would have been proud to come up with myself. Then he challenged Kevin to something he called a "grip contest", and I shall always treasure the memory of Kevin shouting, "The geek's hurting me". Apparently Ted's been doing something called "isometric exercises" since the age of ten. So he fended everybody off and our takeover of yearbook is forging ahead.'

Jane brandished a clenched fist. 'Today the yearbook, tomorrow the world! Sounds like Ted made quite an impression on you. Sure you're not the one who's going to join his cult after all?'

'Committing to working with somebody else on an extracurricular activity is a big enough shock to my system. I don't think we have enough in common to extend to a lasting friendship outside yearbook. Don't tell my parents, though, I want to keep them nervous.'

'All right. I'll keep your secret. And the one about enjoying yearbook.' Jane paused again. 'So long as you don't freak out.'

Sonny gave Jane a focussed stare. 'About what?'

'Well … after Ted and I had pizza that one time … I went out on one date with him.' Sonny said nothing. Jane continued, 'It was just a first date. On first dates I try to stick to vandalism and loitering …'

Sonny interrupted. 'This is perfect!'

'Huh? I mean, how?'

'I didn't get around to telling you _why _my parents want to invite you around. They're worried that I might join this non-existent cult of Ted's, so they obviously figure the way to distract me from Ted is to divert my attention back to my _old _friend: in other words, you. I can't wait till they find out you're dating Ted. It'll be like my old dream where people are walking down the street and their heads spontaneously explode. I'll have to start thinking about what else I might be able to squeeze out of them afterwards.'

Jane shook her head. 'I'm not dating Ted. It was just the one date, like I said.'

'So don't tell my parents that part, obviously.' Sonny tilted his head towards Jane in a thoughtful half-nod. 'I'm sorry you two crazy kids couldn't make it work, but I'm not surprised. Ted's very honest and ethical and smart, and his weirdness is mostly the good kind, but …'

Jane finished for him. 'There's just something missing, right?'

Sonny nodded again. 'I guess we both knew that from the beginning, really, didn't we? You'd never get Ted playing _Cannibal Fragfest_. Do you want to try it out after dinner?'

'Of course.' Jane cocked her head. 'So your parents handed over the software? And you're still keeping up with yearbook anyway?'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'I guess. I mean, if an opportunity to slide out gracefully falls into my lap I suppose I'll take it up on general principles, but unlike DeMartino I'm not completely desperate to escape.'

'DeMartino?'

'Yes, while Ted was routing the attack on yearbook, DeMartino was muttering something about how he was going to talk to the union about getting chess club next year instead.'

* * *

><p>'Ms Onepu? Where's Mr DeMartino? Is he ill?' Sonny said, looking around the yearbook room.<p>

'Oh no, Sonny, please don't worry about him', said Onepu, naïvely unconscious that Sonny had never worried about a teacher's well-being in his life. 'I'm so glad you're here now, Sonny, because I want to talk to you. You were a keen advocate of the change in emphasis to the yearbook that was adopted while Mr DeMartino was the yearbook adviser, I think?'

'More or less, if you leave out the part about my being "keen"—oh, and the part about my being an "advocate". But do you mean that Mr DeMartino isn't in charge any more?'

'Of course he was only an adviser, it's so important to give you all an opportunity to be in charge of something yourselves, but I am taking over from him as the adviser. I'm sure he offered you many excellent ideas, and I hope you won't find it disappointing that I'm replacing him, but perhaps I'll be able to offer a valuable fresh perspective, and it will give me an opportunity to get better acquainted with more of the children at the school, so that I can be more helpful to them all. Starting at Lawndale High partway through the year I didn't have the opportunity to become a faculty adviser to any clubs or student activities until Mr DeMartino indicated that he was interested in a change, and I'm excited about the opportunity Ms Li has given me with the yearbook.'

_Li, huh? _Sonny thought to himself, his shoulders shifting slightly as he integrated the new information. 'What does she think about the change in yearbook policy?' he said, as if he didn't know.

Onepu flushed. 'Of course, the volunteering and charity fundraising work so many students do is tremendously important, and we have a responsibility to nurture them and encourage their growth, but on the other hand if the only way we can give them the recognition they deserve is by taking yearbook space away from sports and clubs, it's only natural that the members of the sports teams and clubs should feel as if they're being wantonly snubbed, and we do have to be careful about not injuring their feelings. The best thing would be if we could give everybody the space they deserve, but that would require expanding the yearbook, and Principal Li—'

'—was very firm with you about the school's budgetary constraints?' Sonny interjected.

Onepu took a breath. '—so we have to work within those constraints, and that means we have to weigh things up carefully so that we can see how we can best recognise everybody while keeping everything in proportion and being sensitive to all the children—'

'I see', Sonny said. 'I have to go now.'

'Oh, don't go, Sonny! This isn't a decision for me, all of you have such valuable contributions to make, and I know that you in particular are so exceptionally intelligent and sensitive, I do want to have your contribution, and—'

'I'll send it to you in writing.'

'—it is such a good idea to give the issue mature reflection and not rush to judgement—'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Dear Ms Onepu<strong>_

_**Upon mature reflection I have decided that the proper course is for me to resign from yearbook.**_

_**I have been associated with the new policy for the yearbook which was endorsed by Mr DeMartino. I see the difficulties which now exist for you because of the adoption of this policy, and I can see also that it is not now going to be continued. In response, the gesture I wish to make is my resignation.**_

_**I realise that this will deny us the opportunity to work together on the yearbook. I can assure you whole-heartedly that I place great value on the benefit I have derived as a result of my participation.**_

_**Sincerely, Sonny Morgendorffer**_

_And sincerely it is, and great value too, _Sonny thought, as he started up another game of _Cannibal Fragfest_.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'The New Kid' by Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil<strong>_


	21. Hothouse Ghetto

**Not So Different**

_**21. Hothouse Ghetto**_

Sonny couldn't understand why Principal Li was excited.

Grove Hills, an expensive private school which promoted itself on the basis of academic excellence, had invited some students from Lawndale High to visit. From their point of view it was a straightforward marketing exercise. But what was Li's angle? If the most academically capable students at Lawndale High were creamed off by Grove Hills, how would she benefit? Why were the invitations actually being channelled through Lawndale, with Li coming into study hall to announce them? Could it be something as crude as a cash payoff, a 'finder's fee'?

True, given their past interactions, Sonny could imagine the principal being glad to see the back of _him_, but not Jodie Landon, who was one of the other Lawndale students invited.

He guessed _Jodie _might be excited. That would make some kind of sense.

Personally he sympathised more with Jane's reaction to Li's announcement: 'I knew those straight Cs in math would pay off some day.' Sonny was already going to a school where everybody thought they were cooler than he was. Why would he want to go somewhere where people thought they were smarter than he was too?

His parents, naturally, did not see it the same way. They were thrilled about Grove Hills. Why wouldn't they be? Nobody was expecting _them_ to go there. Except, that is, to accompany him for the weekend visit. At least he got to exact a cash bribe from them before acquiescing. And there was an unexpected opportunity to rain on Quinn's parade by reminding his parents of the last time they'd left Quinn alone in the house (she'd hosted a keg party and somebody had thrown up in the closet), and then to inspire Quinn with nightmares about the same solitary scenario, involving mass murderers, serial killers, torturers, and cannibals. Their mother didn't like the idea of Quinn alone at home anyway, and suggested that she stay at the Griffins, 'even if I have to call that witch, Linda'. (Helen Morgendorffer brought out the same viciously competitive streak in Linda Griffin that Quinn brought out in Sandi.)

Despite leaving Quinn behind, they were still four in the car on the way to Grove Hills, the fourth being Jodie. Her parents were attending a new members' brunch at a club they'd waited three years to get into, so the Morgendorffers had agreed to give her a ride (the Landons would meet them at Grove Hills later).

'Remember', Sonny said to Jodie before they left, 'no matter what happens on this ride you've already waived your right to sue me for confining you with lunatics.'

Sonny cautioned Jodie about his parents, but not his parents about Jodie. He thought, if you had to have somebody in the car with you, that Jodie wouldn't be so bad—not as bad as Quinn, for example. He had failed to think ahead to his parents' predictable reaction to Jodie's presence.

His mother started off by asking Jodie whether she belonged to any clubs. Sonny told her that she didn't have to answer, but Jodie naturally had no objection to listing her extracurricular activities, including tennis. At once, his father wanted to know why Sonny didn't join the tennis team.

What kind of question was that? 'Dad, it's not football, but it's still a sport.'

His father changed the subject by asking Jodie whether she had 'a fella'.

'Yeah, his name's Michael. But everybody calls him Mack.'

'But he wasn't invited on this trip', Jake continued, his voice hinting at the significance of the difference between the chosen and the rest.

Sonny had no trouble guessing what his father was thinking: his version of relationship algebra would be something like 'Mack is less than Jodie; Mack is less than Sonny; which two are closest in value?' _I don't need this_, he thought. Aloud, he said, 'I don't know how they picked the people for this. Mack's one of the better students in our grade. And he's a pretty decent "fellow" too, for the captain of the football team.' _Let's hope that does it_, he thought. _With luck Dad isn't going to incite competition between me and the captain of the football team, not after what happened with the thug who captained the football team back in Highland. _He winced in reminiscence.

'Captain of the football team?' said his father. 'I thought football stars usually dated cheerleaders?' Sonny saw Jodie wince, but he himself could see the segue his father was navigating towards, and how to steer around it.

'I told you, Dad. Mack's pretty decent.' That earned him a grateful look from Jodie.

With barely a moment's pause, his father went on. 'Speaking of cheerleaders, Jodie, do you know Brittany Taylor? Sonny did a science project with her, but we haven't seen much of her lately.'

Sonny intercepted again. 'It's just like you said, Dad. Cheerleaders mostly date football stars. Brittany's dating Kevin Thompson, the quarterback, and he takes up most of her time.' Sonny glanced for a moment at Jodie. She knew at least as much as he did about the instability and lack of sincere exclusivity in Brittany and Kevin's relationship, but he was confident she would be too nice to say anything about it where his parents could hear.

In fact Jodie crossed up his expectations by saying clearly, 'Yeah, Kevin's great' and then in an undertone pitched only to him 'at smashing beer cans with his head'. It was almost enough for Sonny to reward her with a smile.

Before his parents could say anything else humiliating, they arrived at Grove Hills. It looked like a manorial estate. Sonny asked whether they should just apply for jobs in the stables.

He was pleased, though, when the parents were separated from the children instead of the children from the parents. As he and Jodie walked up to the building with the big welcome banner, Jodie expressed slight puzzlement about the conversation in the car.

'I already told you, you waived your right to sue.'

'It's all right. I'm just … curious.'

Sonny gave a half-shrug, shoulders only, and explained. 'My parents would like me to be a normal high-school boy with a normal girlfriend—along with the normal 4.0 GPA, of course. _And _the absolutely normal display of extracurriculars that will guarantee admission to a first-choice college.'

'Your first choice or theirs?'

'They'd prefer not to think about the possibility of conflict. Anyway, here are the two of us on our way to Grove Hills, with our top grades—it's a match made in heaven. And you have all those extracurriculars, too!'

'Then what was that business about Brittany? Don't they know what her grades are like?'

'You know how and why Barch paired up Brittany and me for that science experiment, but my dad doesn't. The idea of my pursuing a cheerleader like Brittany is another way he can imagine me as like a normal high-school boy, and obviously if he imagines me pursuing her he wants to imagine me pursuing her successfully.'

Jodie nodded. 'So what do your parents think about Jane?'

'I'm not dating Jane. We're friends. I don't date anybody.'

'But you said your parents want you to have a girlfriend. Why don't they think of Jane?'

'To begin with, my parents were excited that I had a friend. I never had a friend before. But …', said Sonny, scratching behind his ear, '… what _I _like about being with Jane is that when I'm with her, I'm myself, only more so. My parents' wanting me to have a girlfriend, or even friends, is part of their wanting me to be a different person. They haven't exactly got anything against Jane, but she doesn't really do it for them.'

Their conversation was interrupted by the approach of one of the Grove Hills staff, who introduced herself as Marina. After Jodie and Sonny had identified themselves, Marina introduced them to three Grove Hills students—Lara, Graham, and Cassidy—and asked them to tell Jodie and Sonny about the advantages of Grove Hills.

'Well', said Lara, 'number one, you only have to put up with shrill recruiters at phony functions like this.'

To Sonny's way of thinking, the really interesting thing about this remark was that Marina exhibited no sign of offence at it. She just excused herself and left them to their own devices.

Cassidy took up Lara's theme. 'And you're not surrounded by nearly as many stupid people as you would be at home.'

'Starting with your parents', Graham said.

Lara, Graham, and Cassidy all laughed. More interestingly, Jodie did too. Sonny didn't know anything about Jodie's parents. He knew about his own parents, though. He allowed his face to alter imperceptibly with amusement. 'Maybe this place isn't so bad', he said.

They didn't have long to chat before Marina rounded them up again to watch a short film promoting the school. When your parent is a marketing consultant, you have an ideal opportunity to learn to be suspicious of promotional materials, so Sonny wasted no time trying to take the film seriously. As the narrator dilated lyrically on the uses that could be made of the luxurious facilities, Sonny whispered to Jodie about the suitability of the scenic bell tower for dumping bodies into the river. Jodie giggled, but the girl on the other side of Jodie shushed him. Evidently the Grove Hills screening process used academic ability as a criterion, but not immunity to marketing. Of course not. Why would it?

At the end of the film Marina got up on stage and asked people to say a little about their goals in life. 'Who'd like to start?'

Sonny was unsurprised to see Jodie's hand shoot up. 'Well', she said, 'some day I'd like to own my own business: maybe a consulting firm geared towards minority start-ups.'

'Excellent!' said Marina. _Who asked you for an evaluation? _thought Sonny.

Marina continued by asking Sonny about his goal, presumably on the inadequate grounds that he was sitting next to Jodie. Sonny explained that he didn't have any. Marina insisted that he must.

_Right, both barrels_, thought Sonny. 'My goal is to avoid getting any more of the beatings which have been a regular part of my school experience until now, but without compromising my personal standards to achieve that end.' Marina giggled nervously. Sonny felt confident she wouldn't bother him again and he was right.

With the shill now giving him the kind of wide berth he was comfortable with, Sonny decided to use the 'meet and greet' function to size up his potential future classmates a little more. His first impression had been somewhat favourable, but there was a seed of doubt at the back of his mind. When Lara said something about 'high school' and 'the happiest time of your life', was she ingenuous or sarcastic?

He tested the water by saying, 'Only if your life is extremely short.'

Graham laughed and told him he was funny, but offset the effect with an inappropriate clap on the shoulder. There was definitely something out-of-kilter about Graham, like a radio tuned just off the correct frequency. _You've been bullied_, Sonny thought, _and you could never find just the right response, could you?_ It would be good to know whether the bullying was a feature of Grove Hills or of Graham's former environment—or both.

Jodie wasn't picking up on anything wrong. 'See what happens when you give people a chance?' she whispered to Sonny.

Sonny was saved the effort of a response when Graham decided to explain his vision of the happiest time of _his_ life, which involved huge amounts of money and 'a model on each arm'.

'Gee, that's interesting', said Sonny. 'I guess you can be intellectually gifted and still be morally bankrupt.'

Graham laughed like a blocked drain. 'I certainly hope so.'

As Sonny glanced at Jodie and raised one eyebrow, Lara and Graham drew attention to, and directed contempt at, another Grove Hills student who had appeared at the punch bowl, within their observational range but outside conversational distance. Cassidy explained that this student had scored 'only in the ninetieth percentile' in a recent standardised test. This was what had reversed Lara and Graham's attitude from acceptance to rejection.

Immediately Sonny had a vivid flash of Jane saying 'I knew those straight Cs in math would pay off some day.' The image faded only to be replaced by an equally vivid flash of Quinn giving her unsolicited appraisal of Grove Hills: 'that place where they fence off all the geeks'.

If Sonny found himself aligning with Quinn it was a sign of _something _not right.

'Thank goodness for standardised tests', he said, now carefully not looking at Jodie and keeping his face in neutral. 'Otherwise we'd never know who our real friends are.'

'Right', said Graham, falling into Sonny's conversational trap. 'I mean … amusing', he said, trying to lever himself out of it. He turned and left, and Cassidy and Lara went with him.

Sonny fed Jodie's own words back to her. 'See what happens when you give people a chance?' Jodie, for want of a legitimate response, exclaimed Sonny's name in exasperation, and then sped after the others, calling them to wait.

Standing alone in a crowd and talking with nobody was one of the many things about which Sonny had nothing to learn from Grove Hills. He put in a little practice just to keep his hand in. Then he decided it might be interesting to find out whether there was some point at which Jodie would hear the clue phone ringing. He strolled over to where she was still talking with Graham and Lara. He didn't need to focus full attention to observe that Graham was more interested in talking than listening and that it looked as if the news bulletin was finally about to be received at Outpost Station Jodie. In passing he noticed Graham's reference to a quarterback who had told the whole school—presumably the school he was at before Grove Hills—that Graham (disguised by the second person pronoun used impersonally) showered in a towel.

_That would do it_, Sonny thought, his earlier hypothesis corroborated. He'd known more than one football hero like that himself. Graham was still on a futile quest for payback, and blood-blind emotion led him to put down Jodie, not yet bearing his Grove Hills stamp of approval. _You may even find yourself one day with a model on each arm_, thought Sonny, _but you still won't know whether that quarterback's somewhere else with _three _models, all more attractive than your ones._

Meanwhile Jodie had finally worked up to the point of telling Graham off as the boring miserable myopic loser he was, regardless of his standardised test scores. Then she stormed off too quickly for his retort: 'I'll make sure you never set foot in this school again!'

'That's a relief', Sonny said. 'Can we have it in writing, please, and notarised?'

After that line, there was no more to say, so Sonny went outside to find Jodie sitting on a bench in the gathering dark.

'Admit it', he said to her. 'That felt good.'

'Well, a little.' She half-turned to look at him as he sat down next to her. 'Okay, a lot.'

'Busting on jerks like Graham is one of life's few pleasures. You should try it more often.'

Jodie looked away and down and said, 'Oh, shut up.'

Sonny looked down too. 'Um, good start.'

Jodie turned to face straight at Sonny and opened her eyes wide to look directly at him. 'You realise your negative approach to everything is self-defeating, right?'

'Well, it's nice to know there's somebody I can defeat.'

'I mean, you may spare yourself some pain by cutting everybody off, but you miss out on a lot of good stuff, too.'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Jodie, when was the last time you were bullied? Because I'm thinking it was probably years ago—if ever. But when I told Marina that getting beaten up has been a regular part of my school experience, I wasn't just making something up to get her off my back. That's one thing Graham and I have in common, despite his being a jerk.'

Jodie's brow furrowed. 'He told you that?'

'Told me? I didn't need him to tell me. This is my area of specialist expertise. I've been directly acquainted with enough football stars like that quarterback he mentioned to connect the dots. To be strictly accurate, it's not an absolute certainty that Graham was _physically_ bullied, just odds-on, but it doesn't necessarily make a lot of difference. I know what Graham came here to Grove Hills to get away from, and we both know that it hasn't worked for him. But I have an attitude that works for me now, even if it does mean I miss out on some stuff.'

There was a pause while Jodie digested this. Then she said, 'Okay, you're an expert on your problems. Am I allowed to be an expert on my problems?'

'Yeah, sure.'

'At home, I'm Jodie. I can say or do whatever feels right. But at school, I'm the Queen of the Negroes. The perfect African-American teen. The role model for all of the other African-American teens at Lawndale. Oops! Where'd they go? Believe me, I'd like to be more like you.'

_Jodie Landon wants to be more like me? _'You may never quote me, but there are times when I'd like to be more like you.'

Jodie looked as if that was the nicest thing anybody had ever said to her. 'Really?'

'I'm not saying all the time.' Sonny tilted his head to one side. 'Is that why you're always cranked up for maximum output, never relaxing, because you want to be a perfect example?'

'Well, not just for the sake of it. It's not just about the way I look to other people. When it comes time for college entry, I want to have the best grades and the transcript full of extracurriculars that will impress any admissions office. Sure, my parents are pushing for that, but I want it for myself, too.'

Sonny gave a quick shrug. 'I want to get good grades too. But I figure I'll get them by doing special projects when that's the way to get them, and I'll get them by coasting when that works. If I can coast and still get good grades, why not?' He looked around. 'Somehow I don't think that attitude would go down well around this place.'

There was little more to the Grove Hills trip. Sonny and Jodie had both decided, for their slightly different reasons, not to change schools. The next day they parted to travel home with their respective parents. On the drive back Sonny's mother tried to pretend that they were accepting his decision against their own preferences, but Sonny discerned that they'd heard things about Grove Hills at the parents' sessions that turned them off. It didn't really matter what.

Of somewhat more interest was the unusual turn of events which followed their return. They'd all got out of the car, and Helen and Jake had gone inside, when a defeated Jane came along the street trundling in front of her an oblivious unresisting Quinn, babbling non-stop fashion-related trivia. What had Quinn been doing with Jane?

Sonny didn't press Jane for details of her trauma. He already knew what it was like sharing quarters with Quinn. Jane just hadn't been case-hardened. He would wait till she was healed to compare scars.

He had no qualms, on the other hand, about extracting information from Quinn. He probably wouldn't even have had to threaten her to get her to talk, but threatening Quinn was fun. Sonny knew their mother would react unfavourably if she found out that Quinn had not stayed with Sandi, not after Helen had had to abase herself to the detested Linda Griffin. All he had to do was promise Quinn pointedly that their mother would never find out from him, so long as he got to hear the story.

The only tricky part was decoding the facts from Quinn's cloaking interpretations, but eventually Sonny was confident he had it straight.

Quinn had gone to the Griffins' according to plan, and she and Sandi had fenced verbally (with buttoned foils) as usual. What had made things turn seriously nasty was that Sandi Griffin's two noisy younger brothers had started fawning over Quinn. Piqued, Sandi had suggested that Quinn might be more comfortable at Tiffany's. In other words, she'd thrown her out.

Tiffany's only idea for relating to Quinn had been ceaseless requests for reassurance about her appearance: the arrangement of her features, the whiteness of her teeth, the possible tendency of any of her outfits to make her look fat. When Quinn's surprisingly large capacity for patient provision of the demanded reassuring responses had been exhausted, Tiffany's interest in her had been immediately exhausted as well. In other words, she'd thrown her out.

That left Quinn with Stacy, who was only too happy to have her as a guest. That was only too happy with the emphasis on the 'too'. Stacy was too happy to have outfits the same as Quinn's, accessories the same as Quinn's, make-up stylings, tastes, preferences, attitudes, … That was _too _much admiration even for Quinn, who had fled—and so wound up at the door of the Lane house, begging for shelter from the mass serial cannibals Sonny had told her about. Poor Jane.

He felt no sympathy for Quinn, whose chief voiced complaint about the whole experience was not the behaviour of her alleged friends from the Fashion Club but Trent's insistence on referring to her only as 'Sonny's sister' despite being reminded of her name (when she couldn't remember his, and could barely remember Jane's). Sonny pointed out that she owed her shelter from her night terrors to being the sister of her weird outcast brother, and added that if she ever forgot about her debt to her weird outcast brother's outcast friend, she could be sure that he would find a way to enforce payment.

The Grove Hills story ended where it began, in study hall (where Jane was spending her time drawing a picture of Quinn with a bullet hole in her head). Sonny stopped at the desk next to Jodie's and picked up her book to find out what it was: _How To Win Friends And Influence People_. Sonny sat down at the next desk with his book, _Heart of Darkness_. They exchanged a few words about their respectively chosen works, looked at each other for a long few seconds, and then began to read.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Gifted' by Peggy Nicoll<strong>_


	22. Getting The Silver Lining To The Mint

**Not So Different**

_**22. Getting The Silver Lining To The Mint**_

Sonny was with Jane at a grunge club where Mystik Spiral had a gig. Over the unnecessary loudness of the band's performance, he managed to make out that she was suggesting that they go for a burger afterwards. When he signified his agreement, Jane said that she was going to make a quick bathroom stop first and asked Sonny to make sure to let Trent know where she was if the set finished and he came looking for her.

As Jane walked away, one part of Sonny's mind was wondering whether she needed to use the toilet or was just going to check her make-up, but another part of his mind was worrying about being exposed in the middle of an unfamiliar environment full of strange people and without a second pair of eyes to help keep a look-out. He concentrated his attention on trying to get into a position that was both closer to Trent on the stage and closer to a wall at his back. When his senses alerted to him to the presence of another person in the zone of too great proximity behind him, and hence the possibility of an attack, it was just a moment too late. He had only half-turned when he felt a hand make contact with his buttocks and squeeze.

Completing the turn, and breaking the contact, he saw a woman of about Trent's age leering at him.

'Hey there, hot stuff', she said in a heavily liquored drawl. 'You a new fan o' the Spi'al?' She advanced her face and her bust towards him. 'I just _know _I'd 'emember if I'd seen _you _before.' Interpreting Sonny's reflexive paralysis as an invitation, she lurched or swayed closer to him and brought her hand up between his thighs to give him another discomposing squeeze. 'Nice to meet somebody with a shared in'erest. I just know we're goin' t' be _good _friends.'

Sonny recovered just enough muscular control to twitch his head from side to side.

The drunk swayed a little backwards. 'Hey, y' shy!' She leered more than ever. 'I bet y' know _just _how cute that makes y' look.' She gave a huge wink, with a bob of the head like a marionette. 'I got somethin' here should help y' nerves.' With her right hand still groping Sonny, her left hand began fumbling awkwardly in her bag, but not being ambidextrous she only succeeded in dropping it. Staggering in surprise on her spike heels, she released Sonny and bent to recover the dropped item. He immediately seized the opportunity to move away, his gaze whipping back and forth between his potential escape route and his potential pursuer. He'd managed to put an obscuring screen of half a dozen people between himself and her before she straightened, triumphantly waving a liquor flask. He noted with slight relief that she was looking for him in the wrong direction. A moment later he realised just in time that he'd almost blundered into another unfortunately familiar face, a classmate, a goth whose name he remembered, from her appalling poetry recital at Café Lawndale, as Andrea.

She recognised him, too. 'Sonny Morgendorffer', she said, with surprising interest, and then a moment later, 'You don't look well. What happened to your neck?'

Sonny was confused. He didn't know anything had happened to his neck. What could happen to a neck? Broken? Guillotined?

'You've got a horrible blotchy rash.'

Sonny squinted downwards trying to see for himself. He had been feeling overheated, but it hadn't occurred to him that it might be a sign of something physically wrong. 'You're right. I don't feel well. Andrea, I hate to say this, but can I ask you a favour?'

'A favour? Is this some kind of a trick? Are you trying to set me up to be humiliated?'

Sonny shook his head, trying to clear it. 'What? No! Why would I want to do something like that? You're not my sister or … Look, I'm not feeling well, and I only wanted to ask you to find Jane Lane and tell her I had to go home. I'll owe you one, okay?'

'Jane? Yeah … okay. I'll tell Jane.'

Sonny scanned the room again. The drunk woman was still looking for him but still hadn't spotted him. He noticed Jane and Trent looking for him as well; they hadn't spotted him either. He slid through the crowd away from them and from Andrea, then darted out of the building and hailed a cab. As he climbed into it he was conscious of how fuzzy his head felt. He was inappropriately surprised when the driver asked for an address, and the man was starting to fume before Sonny managed to gather his wits enough to articulate an answer.

At home, he slipped as quickly as possible past his parents, who were sitting in front of the television, and then upstairs. He still felt overheated and fuzzy-headed, and he thought he'd better look in the bathroom mirror and check his neck for the blotchy rash Andrea had mentioned. 'Blotchy' didn't begin to cover it, although Sonny wished something would. A violent red outbreak had advanced from his neck to his chin, and the invasion seemed to be making rapid progress towards the aim of outflanking his forehead.

What had caused that? Sonny didn't want to think about it. He just wanted to get to his bedroom. Bed. Sleep. Maybe he'd feel better in the morning. There's a first time for everything.

He didn't wake up feeling better; he woke up gasping after a night of troubled dreams, which he was glad to have mostly forgotten. But when he rushed to the bathroom and inspected himself in the mirror, the rash had completely disappeared and he breathed out in relief.

At the breakfast table his father handed him a pamphlet about the warning signs of a teenager using drugs. Sonny rapidly checked them off and concluded, out loud, that Quinn was clean, although it couldn't hurt to check her pupils. Their father signalled his nervousness by laughing. Apparently he was concerned that _Sonny _might be taking drugs. Too easy.

'Oh, then you're not supposed to let me read this. You're supposed to sneak around, spying on me and looking through my sock drawer.'

The doorbell rang and Sonny went to answer, wondering whether he should leave any inventive surprises in his sock drawer. Probably not. His father would have trouble figuring out which one _was_ Sonny's sock drawer.

It was Jane at the door, come to walk with him to school. She cracked a joke about his disappearing act of the previous night. On the way to school he explained about his medical emergency and apologised. Jane asked whether he had any idea what caused 'this so-called rash'. Sonny said he only wished he knew.

'Anyway', said Jane, 'the important thing is that instead of going to your friends for help, you ran screaming into the night.'

Sonny couldn't deny it, but luckily for him Jane described it as a 'perfectly logical response'. He concurred.

He didn't think any more about the rash until he was in O'Neill's class. O'Neill was saying something stupid—or at least his mouth was open, always a bad sign, although Sonny wasn't actually attending to its emissions—so Sonny, with nothing better to do, was reflexively scanning the room when he noticed Andrea. She wasn't looking at him, and he'd overheard nothing at school to suggest that she'd uttered a word to anybody about his rash, but he thought to check his skin, and mysteriously reappearing blotches, on his hands now, disconcerted him into a headlong bolt from the room. O'Neill could of course be relied on to attribute Sonny's flight to the inappropriateness of his own remarks. The only mistake he'd make would be imagining that he ever said anything that wasn't inappropriate.

After a quick confirmation of his condition in the bathroom mirror, Sonny decided there was nothing for it but a visit to the school nurse. Strict rationality required him to acknowledge the existence of some competence somewhere at Lawndale High, but he knew the odds were unfavourable. The nurse, when he got in to see her, looked enough like Principal Li to be a relative hired through nepotism, but whereas Li's command of the language lacked only quality, Nurse Chase's English-language repertoire was deficient in quantity as well. She didn't really need his attempts at explanation, though. She could see easily enough what was wrong with him. Her reaction confirmed to Sonny that he must look disgusting. She had no hesitation in calling his parents to take him to the doctor immediately.

It was his father who manifested at the nurse's office, all of a lather (typically); no doubt his mother was labouring away on a big case (did she never have small cases?). There was no delay getting him away from the school to the doctor's surgery. The doctor asked him a few token questions, mentioned that Sonny had a slight fever in addition to the rash, admitted that he didn't know the cause, and (over Sonny's token protest) had him checked into the hospital for some tests.

The orderly who tucked Sonny into his hospital bed made a cryptic remark about a former occupant of the room, a Mrs Sullivan, but wouldn't answer Sonny's questions about her. Sonny thought it was just terrific, when he was suffering from an unexplained rash, to have the hospital personnel acting as if they were trying to induce anxiety instead of relieve it: was this some new reverse-psychological therapeutic approach? But he had something more pressing on his mind. He induced his father to leave the room by tempting him with the idea of a cold can of root beer, and as soon as he'd gone Sonny placed a telephone call to Jane. He wanted to make sure that she understood that he didn't want gossip going around the school. He had barely had time to explain when he felt obliged to interrupt the call for the arrival of his mother and sister.

His mother gasped. 'Oh darling. Oh my goodness, just look at you.'

'Hi, Mom. Good to see you, too.' He explained his father's absence just as the man returned. His mother rounded on her husband, wanting to know what the doctor had had to say.

'Nobody's been in to see him yet, but Dr Davidson doesn't think it's drugs.'

While Sonny and Quinn exchanged token greetings, their mother castigated their father for his lackadaisical attitude. She thought he should have been pressing the hospital staff constantly to make sure that Sonny got proper attention, which she didn't believe the hospital could otherwise be relied on to provide.

'You know', Sonny said, 'this is exactly the kind of constant bickering that could make an otherwise happy young person turn to drugs.'

His mother ignored him. Her usual pattern when her husband hadn't done what she thought he should have was first to berate him and then to take over. She left the room to make some unfortunate hospital staff member's life a misery.

'You said I could have a root beer', Sonny's father whimpered.

He was asleep and snoring, and Sonny was watching _Sick, Sad World_, by the time Sonny's mother returned, escorting a doctor to whom she was making veiled threats about malpractice. The doctor made an uneasy and unexplained remark about the mysterious Mrs Sullivan, but wouldn't provide any clarification of it when asked. Was it an issue of doctor–patient confidentiality? He went on to introduce himself to Sonny as Dr Phillips.

'Hi, I'm Quinn', said Quinn, in a tone of voice which Sonny recognised just as well as the completely opposite one Quinn had used for greeting him. 'I get sick too.'

Dr Phillips acknowledged Quinn.

'I think the way you save people's lives is really cool', Quinn said.

_Is there _no _end to it? _thought Sonny. _He must be twice her age …_

Dr Phillips wanted to know about any other symptoms Sonny was having, before they came to take his blood samples. Sonny's mother alleged that he'd been sniffling, at which word his father woke up and started looking for the drug information pamphlet. Dr Phillips asked everybody to leave the room so he could ask Sonny 'rather personal' questions.

When his family had gone, Sonny assured Dr Phillips that he didn't take drugs and was not sexually active. The doctor brushed his answer aside. He didn't really have any questions for Sonny. 'I just thought you could use a break from your family for a while. You play gin rummy?'

* * *

><p>That night Sonny had a strange fever dream. The ghost of the mysterious Mrs Sullivan came to the room to escort him to Heaven, from which he was ejected for being a brain. He fell through the clouds until he woke between sweaty sheets.<p>

* * *

><p>The next day Jane dropped by for a visit just as Dr Phillips finished briefing Sonny on the latest test results. Sonny introduced them.<p>

'Friend, not family, right?' the doctor said.

'How can you tell?' said Jane.

'Sonny seemed happy to see you.' The doctor excused himself.

As soon as he was gone Jane started making flirtatious remarks about him. Sonny had understood it with Quinn, she was just keeping her hand in, but what was Jane playing at? Phillips was twice _her_ age, too.

Sonny brought the conversation back to his rash, repeating to Jane that none of the tests had found anything, and grumbling about its repulsive nature. Jane observed that Sonny had been perfectly capable of alienating people on personality alone.

'You know', Sonny said, 'you could have just sent flowers.'

'Hey, it's not so bad. And it'll go away—if not this year, then definitely next.'

'At least nobody at school has seen it. They probably haven't even noticed I'm gone.'

'Only Jodie, I think. She asked after you.' At Sonny's look, Jane continued, 'Don't worry, I didn't tell her a thing.'

Sonny put on a solemn look. 'Well done, soldier. I'll see that you get decorated for this.'

'Well, if Jodie noticed you were gone, she probably mentioned it to Mack, but that'd be about it.'

'What about Andrea?'

Jane shook her head. 'Andrea talks to people at school less than you do.'

Sonny hardened his face at her and Jane hastened to mitigate.

'Or, putting it another way, if we don't count your conversations with me, which of course are a complete exception to everything, Andrea talks to people at school only slightly more than you do. I'm guessing she prefers the kind of people she meets at the club. That reminds me, do you have any idea why Brittany would have been at the club the night this all started?'

'Brittany? If Kevin was there, that's why.' Jane shook her head. Sonny half-shrugged. 'If Kevin wasn't there … did you see who she was with?'

Jane shook her head again. 'Anyway, the point is she obviously didn't notice you with your …' Jane gestured at her neck. 'If she knew anything, she'd have spread the gossip to at least half the girls at school, and to Kevin, and then it would have leaked to at least half the boys at school. But nobody's talking about it, so …'

'Score two points plus', said Sonny.

They chatted idly for a little while longer. Sonny told Jane about the mystery of Mrs Sullivan. Then Quinn came in, looking for Dr Phillips. Jane saw Sonny's look and managed to steer Quinn out again. They had barely left when Mrs Sullivan destroyed her mystery by coming into the room asking whether she'd left an enema bag there. She was obviously seriously demented. No wonder the staff couldn't help thinking of her and wished they didn't have to.

* * *

><p>When none of the tests found anything, Dr Phillips sent Sonny home. He said the rash was 'probably' triggered by 'anxiety'—in other words, he had no clue, although he did prescribe an ointment for use if the rash didn't go away by itself.<p>

At home, Sonny's parents asked him what might be causing him anxiety. He didn't know where to begin. Luckily, at just that moment he was saved by the bell—Jane come to pick him up. As he started for the door, his parents told him they were very proud of him.

'I didn't do anything but sit there like a crash test dummy while they took blood', Sonny said. He had to stare at them for a moment before the click, and then his voice took one step down in pitch. 'You were worried, weren't you?'

'Sonny, we're your parents.'

'Yeah, well …'. Sonny turned away and started for the door again. He wasn't sure they heard him hastily squeeze out the words, 'Thanks for being there for me.'

Trent was with Jane at the door. Jane explained that he was going to give them a ride. They both stared at Sonny.

'What?' he said.

The blotches were back.

Apart from getting Dr Phillips's prescription filled, this gave him one other thing to do the next day at school. Covered with ointment, he went straight to the nurse's office and showed her the note the doctor had given him, explaining that he should be excused from gym class until he recovered.

The nurse looked at Sonny's anointed face and glanced away. She puzzled over the note for three minutes before asking Sonny to explain it.

Sonny didn't miss a beat. 'It says "Excused from gym forever".'

'Oh!' said the nurse. She looked at his face again. 'Oh.' She paused again. 'Oh, well, if doctor says … I make it … so to be …'

Anybody watching Sonny ever so closely as he left the nurse's office would have seen nothing on his face but the ointment.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Ill' by Peter Gaffney<strong>_


	23. Why Would Anybody Ask Us?

**Not So Different**

_**23. Why Would Anybody Ask Us?**_

It was depressing news for Sonny when Principal Li announced that the school library would be closed until further notice because of rain-induced damage to the roof.

'Great', he said. 'There goes the only place I can go to be alone.'

'Oh, you know that's not true', said Jane as if helpfully.

It was even more depressing news for Sonny when Li announced that there would be compulsory voluntary participation in the fundraiser for repairs: a simulated medieval fair.

'That may be the stupidest thing I ever heard of.'

Once again, Jane was there to give him the benefit of her perspective. 'I know', she said, straightening her back, raising her head, and spreading her arms to embrace the concept. 'We gotta go.'

Trapped in a pincer movement by Li's draconian edicts and Jane's voyeuristic enthusiasm for the grotesque, Sonny saw his retreat cut off at home when Quinn started prattling to their parents about the part she was going to audition for in the dinner theatre planned for the fair. Enthused, their mother wanted to know what Sonny would be doing at the fair. She insisted that everybody should go.

Why couldn't Quinn learn to keep her big fat stupid mouth shut—sorry, keep her cute sweet perfectly shaped and optimally proportioned stupid mouth shut? Sonny had had no success before with aversion therapy, but he had not yet had a better idea. He asked his parents if the 'everybody' who should go included them. Initially, it appeared, his mother had only meant every student, but Sonny pointed out the opportunity for their parents to support Quinn by cheering from the footlights. Quinn's facial features tried to escape from each other at the thought. _There! _Sonny thought. _See what happens when you open your mouth? So stop_ doing_ it!_

He was still wishing the same thing in the car on the way to the medieval fair. Quinn _had _got the part, and now she was rehearsing her lines interminably. When Sonny vocalised his objections, Quinn pointed out, accurately enough, that it wasn't her fault.

'Mom's making you come to this. It's not like I want you there.'

'Aw, thanks.'

Their mother told them to stop it. 'Quinn, Sonny's very happy to be seeing you in your play', she lied.

Fortunately, when they finally arrived at the fair, Sonny managed immediately to slip away from his family to find Jane.

When he thanked her for meeting him, she reminded him that she was the one who had wanted to come to the fair. 'Besides, I had to get out. Trent discovered a new chord.'

Upchuck came towards them. _Why am I not surprised? _Sonny thought as he realised that Upchuck's approach to the occasion had been to maximise his opportunities for pestering girls. He was dressed in what was presumably supposed to be a medieval jester's costume and carrying what was presumably supposed to be a medieval instrument. Ted DeWitt-Clinton might have known whether they were authentic, but Sonny wasn't going to assume the authenticity of anything associated with Upchuck. And he knew there wasn't anything authentic about Upchuck's offer to sing Jane a madrigal.

How many ways was that just plain wrong? Well, it involved Upchuck, and madrigals were early modern rather than medieval (which would have been all right if this had been a Renaissance fair), and it involved Upchuck, and the original madrigals were performed as unaccompanied vocals, and it involved Upchuck, and the original madrigals were polyphonic rather than solo pieces, and it involved …

While he was still making his mental list, Upchuck had started singing about 'the brave Sir Chuck', raising another point: a real 'Sir Chuck' would be dressed as a knight and certainly not as a jester. Meanwhile, Jane had improvised a metrically parallel line to rhyme with Upchuck's, in which she threatened him with bloodshed—there was the authentic medieval touch. Upchuck responded the way he responded to displays of hostility from any human female: he made a hideously suggestive noise halfway between a purr and a growl and said 'Feisty!' Then, luckily, he spotted and set off in pursuit of another (and equally hostile) target—Andrea, their goth classmate.

At least goths were by name authentically medieval.

Jane and Sonny wandered on until they came to the information booth, staffed by a hapless Jodie Landon. She too was wearing what was presumably _supposed _to be an authentic medieval costume, apparently a gentlewoman's one, and was insisting that it was all in a good cause.

'You just keep telling yourself that', said Sonny. 'Or have your ladies-in-waiting do it.'

Jane asked after Mack. He was in a 'Slay the Dragon' booth. Jodie explained that it was Ms Barch's idea.

'Barch?' said Sonny impassively. 'Has she shown up again?'

Jodie indicated a nearby fortune-teller's tent. The sign outside said 'Girls $2; Boys $20'. Sonny made a mental note to stay well away from it.

Mack emerged in his dragon costume to growl and roar unconvincingly at the small boys gathered around his booth. They were all holding what looked to Sonny to be shaped like rammers for cannons, not the most characteristically medieval weapons, but presumably there'd been some nerfing for safety's sake. Mack's audience did no worse than compare him to Barney until the charging arrival of Sandi Griffin's two seriously under-medicated younger brothers, similarly armed, who led the other boys in a group dragon-drubbing. Sonny wasn't sure whether Mack's cries were part of the show or an indication that there hadn't, at any rate, been _adequate _nerfing. Poor Mack! That's what he got for listening to Barch.

Leaving Jodie's information stall, Sonny steered Jane away from Barch's tent. Jane suggested a Ferris wheel ride instead. Sonny didn't bother mentioning that there were no Ferris wheels in the Middle Ages, or even in the Renaissance. He just asked Jane whether he looked desperate to her. At just that moment, the younger Griffin spawn came charging at them from one direction brandishing their armament and yelling 'Crusades! Crusades!' while Upchuck capered towards them from the opposite direction offering them 'the Ballad of the Misunderstood Minstrel' (at least crusades, ballads, and minstrels were all medieval). Now Sonny looked desperate enough for the Ferris wheel. There was one basket left. Upchuck was still calling out as Sonny and Jane boarded it, until the arrival of the younger Griffins, who recognised his obvious natural suitability as a target and started walloping him.

Just as the ride was about to start, the operator loaded a third person into Sonny and Jane's two-person basket.

'Excuse me', said Sonny. 'You can't do this.'

Jane said, 'We're human beings, damn it!'

The operator ignored them and started the ride.

Sonny recognised the third passenger as Quinn's friend and fellow-member of the Fashion Club, Stacy. She was crying, and her make-up looked as if she'd been doing it for some time.

Sonny and Jane didn't want to hear about Stacy's problems, but she was too absorbed in her own pain to care what they wanted. A boy called Bret Strand—Sonny couldn't remember whether Quinn had ever mentioned him, but he never attempted the pointless task of remembering Quinn's victims—had taken Stacy out on one date and then dumped her.

Why was she telling _them _all about it? She might not be smart, but she was smart enough to recognise the idiocy of what she was doing.

'You're not popular enough to understand!' She wailed again. 'You're not even popular and the two of you still have each other!'

Before Sonny had even finished opening his mouth Jane had got in first.

'We're not dating each other.'

Stacy took a moment to digest this. She sobbed, sniffed, and then stared at them. 'But I always see you around together.'

Sonny wished very hard for the ride to be over, but the wheel turned no faster. He tested Stacy's capacity to deal logically with analogy. 'I always see you around with Quinn and the rest of your Fashion Club, but you're not dating them.'

Stacy stared at him again. 'But we're all girls! You're a boy and a girl and you're together all the time!'

'I guess you're right', Sonny said flatly. 'We're just not popular enough to understand.'

Stacy restarted the sobbing. 'I wish I were dead. What did I do wrong?'

Jane said, 'Maybe you did nothing all the time but talk about your own stupid problems.' She looked at Sonny and back at Stacy. 'Guys hate girls who do that.'

'Or maybe', Sonny said, 'he's not interested in you because he's a jerk, and it has nothing to do with you.'

Stacy sniffed and coughed, trying to stop crying. 'Popular people date other popular people. That's how it works. You'd understand if you were popular. Like, if you're a popular girl, you're friends with other popular girls, and you date popular boys. Bret's a popular boy, and he went on a date with me, so why won't he talk to me now?' She ended in another wail.

Stacy kept carrying on as if at a circus, not a fair, for the rest of the ride. In her desperate search for relief she anatomised every relevant detail of her date and her other interactions with Bret, or at least the ones she thought relevant, which seemed to mean mostly her clothes, her accessories, and her cosmetics. Sonny and Jane looked at each other. 'When in hell is this ride going to end?' Sonny said.

'Or when is this ride in hell going to end?' said Jane.

Finally it did and they all got out, Stacy still clinging to Sonny and Jane like a burr. Sonny made an effort to get her to shut up and go away. 'If he's not going to date you, what difference does it make whether he talks with you? I mean, you're not like unpopular people like us, who talk with each other without dating.'

Stacy visibly pulled herself together. 'You're a brain, aren't you? I remember when Tommy Sherman died and Quinn said you were good at helping with bummed-out stuff, and I think Sandi wanted to talk to you about what happened with her cat. And then when Quinn started acting like a brain you came up with that plan to change her back, too.'

'Right', said Jane. 'So you don't want to keep talking to a brain, do you? What if it rubs off on you?'

Stacy looked closely at both of them. 'Still, I might think about your idea of talking to boys without dating them. Maybe it's worth trying.'

'Yes', said Sonny. 'Try it. Go and talk to that Bret person now. Before I commit justifiable homicide.'

Finally Stacy walked away from them.

'Must … stick … head … cold … water', Jane said, in electronically synthesised tones.

Before they could do anything else, Jodie appealed to them for help. She was off to find Ms Li to deal with some kind of riot in the auditorium and needed somebody to take care of the information booth.

As Jodie hurried away, Jane and Sonny looked at each other.

'Uh-oh', said Jane. 'Somebody just put us in a position of responsibility.'

'The day', Sonny said, 'has suddenly turned sinister.'

It occurred to him that if they wanted an 'information booth', he had a lot of information about the Middle Ages, and with a surprising curiosity about developments he led Jane into the booth.

Whatever was going on in the auditorium seemed to have left a large number of smaller children drifting around the fair looking for any point of interest. Some of them washed up on the shores of the information booth, and after wondering why Sonny and Jane weren't wearing medieval costumes, wanted to talk about how cool things were in the Middle Ages, which was perfect for Sonny's purposes.

'Well, it was less crowded in lots of places, because of all the people dying of plague. It killed off half the people in Europe in the sixth and seventh centuries, and then in the fourteenth century it came back again and a third of the population died.'

Jane chimed in. 'Yes, those carts rolling through the streets piled high with festering corpses must have been cool.'

Sonny glanced at her, thinking that she must be imagining a painting, before continuing. 'Of course, they had doctors in the Middle Ages as well as diseases, and either one could kill you. One common medical treatment was to have your blood sucked out by leeches.'

As more enraptured children crowded around the booth, Sonny, ably assisted by Jane, branched out into other subjects, starting with medieval methods of torture and execution. The crowd just kept getting bigger as they went on.

'The Vikings would cut a man's ribs away from his backbone and rip out his lungs. They called it "the Blood Eagle". They also …'

'One torture used by the Inquisition was called the strappado. They'd tie your hands behind your back and then hoist you …'

'There were different kinds of trial by ordeal, some using fire and some using water …'

'During the Albigensian Crusade, one priest told the attackers to kill everybody in a besieged city, heretics or not, because God would be able to tell the souls apart …'

'The daub that was used to make wattle-and-daub huts mixed dung with …'

'One of the technologies that was lost after the fall of the Roman Empire was the flush toilet. Instead, …'

'Chamberpots …'

'Dung-carts …'

'Urine was valuable, too. It was used for cleaning wool. The fullers had to stand up to their ankles …'

Sonny and Jane were just starting to talk about _droit de seigneur _when Jodie reappeared to take over from them. 'Thanks, guys, you saved my life', she said. She looked around at the crowd of children. 'See! You really do have something to contribute if you'll just make a little effort. How have you kept them all entertained?'

Sonny looked around too. 'Trust me, if any of these kids talk to their parents, you want to be able to say you didn't know anything about it.'

'You've got a bright future, Landon', Jane said in her 'tough' voice. 'Don't let two no-goods like us spoil it. Tell us about the riot instead.'

Jodie started. 'Well, there was this …um …' Jodie's eyes jerked for a moment towards Sonny and then hastily back to Jane. '… problem with … um …'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Wasn't that dinner theatre thing supposed to be in the auditorium? You're not going to tell us that one of O'Neill's plans went right, are you? That would be what they called a "portent" in the Middle Ages.'

'No, it … you see …'

'That was the play that my sister was starring in, wasn't it?'

'It wasn't Quinn', Jodie said.

'Oh, that's too bad.'

'No, what I mean … Kevin was supposed to be the co-star, and he never turned up. So Mr O'Neill tried to get Jeffy to fill in and …'

'It was a fiasco and Quinn was humiliated and I missed it?'

'Kind of …'

Sonny looked hard at Jodie, who was still struggling against his gaze. 'You mean there's more?'

Jodie winced. 'Some people started throwing food …'

Jane interjected, 'A food fight?' She swivelled towards Sonny. 'Come on, we've got to see the wreckage at least!'

_You're thinking of another painting, right? _Sonny thought. _I'm thinking that food fights aren't Quinn's sort of thing … not Mom's either … _'And my dad was right in the middle of it, wasn't he?' he asked Jodie. She nodded spasmodically as Jane hustled him away towards the auditorium, leaving a demoralised Jodie in charge of the information booth again.

'See', he said to Jane as she chivvied him along, 'I told you this would be the stupidest thing I ever heard of.'

'And I told you that that's why we had to see it.'

'No, the stupid part is that my whole family must have been humiliated and I _wasn't_ there to see it.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Fair Enough' by Peggy Nicoll<strong>_


	24. Alone Again

**Not So Different**

_**24. Alone Again**_

Sonny and Jane were at Sonny's locker when 'Mack' Mackenzie and Kevin Thompson went past. Mack was fretting aloud about doing badly on a midterm. Kevin was confident about his grade. The only possible rational explanation was obvious in hindsight.

'You weren't even there today', said Mack. 'You cut class on the day of a midterm?'

'I was excused.' Kevin obviously didn't fully understand the explanation that went on to dribble from his mouth, but it emerged that the coach had somehow managed to fix his grade so that he could stay on the team.

'Hey, that's not fair', Mack said. 'I'm on the team and I had to study.'

'I'm the QB, Mack Daddy.'

'I've told you a million times, don't call me that! When are you going to get it through your thick skull already!'

As Mack stormed off, Sonny and Jane agreed that anybody who said life was fair must have been a quarterback. Then Jane seemed to change the subject. 'That rash of yours hasn't come back recently, has it?'

'No.'

'But they said it was probably anxiety that caused it, right?'

'I think they were guessing', said Sonny.

'I was kind of hoping it was contagious and I could catch it from you. I wouldn't mind something that got me out of gym forever.' Jane bent down to do up a bootlace.

'Not good?'

'Coach Morris has us doing something called "Focus on Agility" for a month, which is barely disguised cheerleading practice.'

'Cheerleading?' Sonny echoed. 'You?'

'No, cheerleading not me. So I was kind of sitting it out and I got busted. I have to make up the class after school, which also means I won't be able to walk home with you.'

They were distracted for a moment by Mack fleeing back along the hallway from a pursuing Kevin, as clueless as ever about what he'd done wrong.

'Maybe I can get your rash if I just get more anxious', Jane went on. 'I did have a weird anxiety dream about a pop quiz in math that I was totally unprepared for.'

Sonny remembered something Jane had said to him when they first met. 'Were you in pink taffeta?'

'No. That's how I figured out it wasn't a dream.'

'Uh-oh. Not a great score on the quiz?'

Jane told him that her record of straight Cs in math was in serious danger of being broken by a D. 'And I've got that make-up class after school. So I'm off to study hall.'

'To finish your nap?'

'You know me too well.'

As Jane slouched away from him, Sonny gave himself permission to let concern show on his face.

He was still thinking concerned thoughts as he plodded home. Jane had told him before about her problems with Coach Morris and Coach Morris's problems with the whole Lane family. Apparently Jane's older sisters had shared her attitude to participating in organised sport, or not doing so. Jane said that the way Coach Morris had taught Penny Lane was the reason her sister had spent the last ten years out of the country. Sonny thought she might even be serious—at least partly.

He paused outside the Lane house and gazed at it. He wished he _could _share his serendipitous exemption from gym with Jane, but how?

He could always help her with math, if she wanted him to—but she was proud of her straight C record, as her own achievement. She might not want to drop down to being a D student, but she might not want somebody else to lift her up (as she might see it) to a level she couldn't attain on her own merit.

But when you were at school weren't you meant to have people teach you things you didn't already know yourself? It hardly ever happened for him, but he knew that was supposed to be the point of the whole system.

He trudged on, still pondering.

When he finally walked into the house, his father remarked on the lateness of his return.

'I'm not particularly late, Dad. Quinn's always later than this.'

'Quinn's usually … oh my gosh, Sonny, were you on a date?'

Sonny took milk from the fridge and began pouring it into a glass. 'You know I don't date, Dad. It's just that I usually walk home with Jane but today …'

'You didn't walk home with Jane today? Uh … did you have a fight with Jane about this other girl you've started dating? Listen, Sonny, you can tell your old Dad the truth, no matter what.'

'All right, Dad.' Sonny looked away from his father and then back again. 'Jane's pregnant. We have to decide whether to try to beat the odds against teen marriages.'

Jake laughed. 'That's a good one, Sonny!' He stopped laughing. 'You are kidding, aren't you?'

'I don't know how many times I've told you, Dad. I don't date anybody. But if somebody called Foxy Mamma rings up, it's for me.'

Helen walked into the kitchen. 'Sonny, just getting home?'

'I'm not _that _late. I just walked home more slowly than usual. Jane wasn't with me and she usually makes the pace. Plus I was thinking about her gym class.'

Jake put down his newspaper. 'You were thinking about a girls' gym class!'

Sonny sighed. 'Jane's gym teacher was using class as a disguised cheerleading practice. Jane objected to that, so she tried to sit out. The teacher caught her, so now she has to make up the class. That's why she couldn't walk home with me.'

Helen shook her head uncertainly. 'I'm not sure that refusing to participate in class is such a good idea …'

'But Mom—Dad—I've learned from you both that it's wrong for women to receive different treatment from men. By forcing girls into cheerleading practice, the system is training them to show off how great male jocks are supposed to be.'

Helen pressed her lips together. 'Well, I'm glad you look at that perspective … double standards do have to end, don't they, Jake?'

'Absolutely! And … uh … equal pay for equal work, right?'

'I mean', Helen continued, 'they don't have you in short shorts cheering in your gym class, do they?'

'No', said Sonny, with strict accuracy. He didn't want to get into a discussion with his parents about how he'd got out of gym. Luckily they both seemed to be feeling slightly awkward with the conversation, so he was able to leave it at that. He went up to his bedroom thinking that making his parents feel awkward was something to mention in an email to Luhrmann.

He also told Jane about the conversation the next day at school.

Jane shrugged. 'It's nice to know that your parents are on my side about this, even though it doesn't actually help.'

'What about your parents?'

'I'll have to ask them the next time they're in town. I think my mother might have been on a vision quest in the desert, so it's possible the subject came up.' Jane grunted. 'Coach Morris was passing remarks about the Lane family again.'

'_You_ do that all the time.'

Jane shook a finger at him. 'You know that's different.' She grunted again. 'I just wish I had some sort of smart comeback.'

'Too bad you can't bring handguns to school.' Sonny continued without changing his tone. 'If she thinks you're no good, you could get in first. Embrace the complaint to deflate it. _You_ tell _her_ that you're just plain no good.'

'You're forgetting that this involves my family as well. I don't want to agree with her about them. And anyway it wouldn't work without your face and your voice changing the meaning to "Go to hell". I don't have your style.'

Sonny gave his head one shake. 'You've got what every artist wants, your own style. And speaking of style, what are the Fashion Club doing over there? Surely they're not signing up for the track team tryouts? Could it have anything to do with the boy behind the desk, do you think? I don't remember seeing him before. He's not in any of our classes.'

'Maybe he's a junior.' Jane glanced at Sonny. 'I've n— I've seen him in the gym. I guess that was because he's on the track team. Do you think some girls might find him attractive?'

Sonny looked sideways at Jane. 'If _you're _asking for _my_ opinion, I'd have to say yes.'

'On the other hand, maybe those girls trying out for track are doing it just because they like to run? Unlike the fashion fiends, judging by what they're saying to him now.'

Sonny and Jane were standing close enough to the sign-up desk to hear the Fashion Club's dismissive comments about the idea of female participation in sports, culminating with Sandi saying, 'What kind of loser would sign up for the track team?'

The boy behind the desk said, 'You girls don't think I'm a loser, do you?'

Sandi chose to interpret this as his bid for their attention, but the boy made it clear that he thought their attitudes unenlightened, so she led the Fashion Club away, leaving nobody near the desk for the boy to focus on except Jane and Sonny. He repeated his views on old-fashioned attitudes to girls in sport, and now Jane grunted under her breath in agreement.

When he said, 'Women can excel at any sport they put their minds to', Sonny saw no harm in stating his concurrence.

'Me too', agreed Jane, stepping up to the desk and reaching out for a pencil. 'I'd like to sign up for the track team.'

Sonny could do nothing but boggle.

* * *

><p>Jane was feeling good as she walked along the school hallway. Morris had shown no generosity of spirit about her trying out for track, but hadn't been able to stop her. Evan, who'd signed her up, had no problem with her overt hostility to Morris. When Jane told him that she was going to wear her headphones if the people on the track team sucked, he'd shown her that he'd already brought his. He seemed genuinely unthreatened, too, by the idea of her being the faster runner. And she did like to run. If she also didn't mind looking at Evan, what about it?<p>

Anyway, now she had to find Sonny so she could explain to him that she wouldn't be able to walk home with him because she'd made the team and had to go to practice.

Sonny didn't give her the reaction she would have liked. She knew he hardly ever seemed impressed by anything—not the way other people showed it when they were impressed, anyway—but she did think she could have hoped for a little support from her best friend. She wasn't too proud to feed him his line.

'This is the part where you say "Hey, way to go, congratulations".'

'Hey, way to go', he said. At least, he must have spoken, but it had been hard to see his lips move.

'Congratulations?' suggested Jane.

'Congratulations', Sonny pretended.

It would have to do. She warned him not to get mushy.

* * *

><p>Helen could hear Sonny in his room as she walked along the hallway. She slowed to eavesdrop. He was fully audible, but she knew he was alone, so he must be talking to himself. It was something about his friend Jane, and a school sports team.<p>

'Hey, if she's the pathetic one, why am I talking to myself?'

Helen had been wondering much the same thing herself.

'And, more importantly, why am I waiting for a reply?'

Now Helen was really starting to worry. When Sonny apparently fell silent, she moved on so as not to be detected. But a little later she was able to overhear him again downstairs as she passed behind him in the living room, where he was standing in front of the television. She knew that Quinn had invited her Fashion Club friends over to watch a beauty pageant, but they must have left the room for some reason, and Sonny was standing alone in front of the set. In other circumstances, she might have hoped that his stopping to watch a parade of swimsuit models was a sign that he was acting more like a normal teenage boy, but after what she had heard upstairs she was sensitised for signs of unnatural disturbance. As far as they went, his sarcastic remarks about the whole beauty pageant concept were sadly but unsurprisingly typical of him. She had to admit that they were fair enough in substance—she certainly didn't favour Quinn's uncritical admiration over Sonny's cynicism in this case—but once again he was talking in a normally audible voice when, as far as _he _knew, there was nobody else in the room.

To another parent it might not seem like much, but when you had a child like Sonny you couldn't help but worry.

She couldn't think what to do. If Sonny were the sort of child who would just open up if she talked to him, she wouldn't have had any cause for concern in the first place. But he was a different kind of child, the kind with almost perfect skills at not giving anything away.

Although he and his sister seldom got on, at least his opinion of Quinn meant he might not be quite so guarded around her. It was all Helen could think of. But how to get Quinn to agree to spend time with her brother?

In the Morgendorffer family, there was only one answer to that kind of question.

* * *

><p>Sonny heard a knock on his bedroom door. For want of a doorman, he announced the knock formally to himself. 'Somebody's knocking', he said, and then, 'Come in.'<p>

It was Quinn, with a hopelessly unbelievable story about wanting to spend time with him. Quinn could never conceal anything from Sonny. Their mother was bribing her with use of a credit card. That made everything simple. Sonny was happy to let her come with him to the library in exchange for a cash advance.

'The library?' said Quinn. 'If anybody saw me there, I'd die.'

Sonny settled the matter without difficulty. 'Okay, then, how about the mall? You know, where your friends hang out.' He didn't even need to say _And can see you hanging out with me_. Quinn could be a fast study on some subjects.

Sadly (from Sonny's point of view), the library turned out not badly for Quinn. At first she browsed the Web—no doubt for the latest fashion updates—while he read comfortably, but soon her truly phenomenal ability to attract male admirers anywhere manifested. They were only youngsters, probably elementary school students, and so of no real value from Quinn's perspective—that is, they couldn't buy her presents, or meals in fancy restaurants—but they wanted her to read them stories, or just talk to them. Soon she had a circle of small children gathered around the comfortable chair she'd taken for a story hour which she improvised largely from fashion magazines ('So Jack and Jill went up the hill or whatever to the sample sale, where Jill found the perfect ensemble and Jack gave it to her for the one-month anniversary of their first date.'). Sonny wouldn't have expected Quinn to derive significant satisfaction from such a setting, but what really put the frosting on the cake was the arrival of an older boy to collect his little brother. He was—or feigned to be, if it mattered—impressed by Quinn's volunteering effort, and Quinn went off with him and his brother, first handing her fashion magazines to Sonny to put away. She called him a librarian. He'd been her distant cousin before, often, a foreign exchange student, and what else he couldn't remember, but 'librarian' was a new one.

He looked down at the cover of the magazine on top of the pile.

' "Thin Thighs For Your Man" ', he read out. 'Why not just serve him drumsticks?'

* * *

><p>Sonny stood by his locker and watched Jane come up to him in her track clothes and carrying her gym bag. Had he really disappointed her with his response when she first told him she'd made the team? Were they still friends? Could he make a wisecrack about her new running career?<p>

Could he not? What kind of friendship would that be? He asked her about a sneaker endorsement contract.

She replied in kind, a good sign, but then she told him that she 'wouldn't _mind_' if he came to her first track meet. Did he want to go on with nobody to talk to but himself?

'Oh', he said, and at least one of his eyes almost smiled. 'Well, you know how I hate to cancel my line-dancing lesson … but okay.'

All she said as she turned to go was 'Cool', as if she were still the same person.

Watching her go, Sonny said aloud, 'The question is, am I supporting my friend or her surrender to the system?' Behind him he heard somebody close a locker door. He half-turned his head. 'Do you mind? This is a private conversation.'

He still hadn't made up his mind whether he was doing the right thing when he was actually sitting in the bleachers waiting for Jane's race to start. A conversation with an unexpectedly appearing Trent didn't help. Trent had been forced to leave the house by the presence of the cleaners in his room, and he said something about recognising the importance to Jane of what she was doing. Probably this was an explanation of his presence as a spectator at the meet, but his meaning was confused when his train of thought jumped the tracks without warning. He started talking about—if Sonny followed correctly—the failure of Trent's audiences to recognise the meaning of his music to him. Sonny was relieved to have that conversation interrupted by anything, even the race starting.

Sonny already knew that Jane was fast, but apparently her performance came as a surprise to other spectators. They were on their feet, shouting, cheering, clapping, whistling, waving pennants, and stamping their feet.

Sonny enunciated the words of a cheer.

* * *

><p>Jane and Sonny went for pizza to celebrate her win. At least, she thought it was to celebrate her win. Sonny only wanted to talk about what she'd missed on television while she was at practice. Jodie and Mack paused at their table to give her real congratulations, but even when she told them that the secret of her success was to imagine running away from a pep rally, which she thought Sonny would have appreciated, he ploughed on heedlessly with the topic he'd already chosen.<p>

Then Evan came to their table, greeted her, and then spoke to Sonny. 'Did you see this girl run like the wind?'

'Have you ever heard her break wind?' was Sonny's response.

Jane's whole face recoiled. 'Sonny!'

Evan was unfazed. He chuckled slightly. 'That's funny to some people', he said, still smiling meaninglessly, and leaned forward to pat Jane on the shoulder. He told her he'd see her at practice and left them to themselves.

And Sonny just kept talking about that damn television program! His face was as masklike as ever, but Jane's settled into a scowl. 'Jeez, Sonny, what the hell was that about?'

He responded as if he didn't even understand the question!

Just then Kevin and Brittany stopped by their table so that Kevin could let Jane know about all the friends she'd get as a track star and a 'winner'.

Sonny said, 'Not like those boring friends you had who liked you even when you lost.' Now his eyes were starting to react.

Jane didn't care any more than Sonny did about having Kevin and Brittany as an audience. 'You mean the ones who make incredibly humiliating jokes at my expense?'

'Oh, come on.'

'You come on, Sonny. So, I tried something different. I went out on a limb and participated in something and it worked out. Why do you have to be so pissy about it?' She got up and left the booth, and her pizza, and Sonny with Brittany and Kevin.

* * *

><p>Sonny knew he shouldn't have said it. Mockery was a key support of his friendship with Jane, granted, but there's a line in these things and he'd crossed it. A fart joke! What had he been thinking? Maybe it was bad taste for Jane to like Evan, but that was not an adequate excuse for the way he'd handled the situation. He wasn't handling it well because he missed Jane, that was the painful truth. But more than that—he really was just plain sorry for what he'd said. He had to tell Jane he was sorry because it was the truth, and he owed that to her but even more to himself.<p>

The problem was finding Jane and an opportunity to speak with her. She was spending a lot more time on her training, and she was also spending more time being lionised for her nova-like contribution to the school's sporting success. Sonny had tried ringing her house, and then just dropping by unannounced, but one time Trent had said that she was out running, and the other that she'd gone out with some other people from the school—probably from the track team. Sonny couldn't be sure whether she was deliberately avoiding him—she certainly had reason to. They were in a lot of the same classes at school, of course, and it wouldn't bother him—or Jane—to ignore the teachers so that they could talk, but if she _didn't _want to listen to him class made it easy for her to avoid doing so.

After a few days of this, he decided that his best chance to catch up with her was when she was coming away from a practice. She'd be fatigued, which could be good or bad, but there was always the chance of a facilitative endorphin rush. This plan meant hanging around near the gym at odd times, and that was how he happened to cross Evan's path.

'I know you', Evan said. 'You're Jane's loser friend, aren't you?'

Sonny said, 'If you want to skip over the verbal jostling and just get straight to the part where you beat me up, it's your choice.'

Evan drew his shoulder back and then struck with straight arm and open hand against Sonny's shoulder, making him stumble backward. 'You do have a smart mouth, don't you?' he said, as he stepped in again, and then he came at Sonny a little harder with both hands striking both shoulders so that Sonny staggered and skidded backward before falling on one hip.

'Or both concurrently is another option', Sonny continued, panting for breath a little.

Evan bent towards him and gave him a casual open-handed smack on one temple. 'If Jane wants to be friends with you', he said, 'that's her business, but I don't think she does any more.' He gave Sonny a smack without effort on the other temple and then walked off.

After a minute Sonny pulled himself together, stood up, and brushed himself off, and after a few minutes more he was rewarded by meeting Jane at last.

He didn't spend time on preliminaries. 'All right, so I thought I was making a joke, but I was really humiliating you in front of this guy you like—'

Jane corrected him. 'Appreciate.'

He accepted the correction. 'This guy you appreciate, which was stupid and insensitive. So I'm an idiot and I'm sorry. Okay?'

'Not so fast. How do I know this is a sincere apology and not a cheap ploy to get back on my good side?'

There could only be one answer to that question. 'Why does there have to be a difference?'

That was good enough for Jane. She accepted his apology. So, still Jane Lane. He suggested pizza after school. Jane had practice. But she said she wished she could have pizza with him, and he knew she meant it.

Still, Jane wishing to have pizza with him was not the same as Jane actually having pizza with him. Jane regretting that she could not walk home with him was not the same as Jane actually walking home with him. She still had to train, she still had to compete, and she still spent time hanging out with the rest of the team, and Sonny still wasn't sure how he felt about any of it. He wanted to have the sort of conversation he would have had with Jane, only not with Jane, and that left him stripped of resources.

* * *

><p>Helen, Jake, and Quinn were already eating dinner when Sonny walked in. He halted, looked at them, looked around the room, and said casually, 'Oh, they're eating dinner. Should I sit down and join them or fake a headache?' Without missing a beat, he looked at them again and said, 'I'm not feeling too well. I think I'll eat later.'<p>

Helen was more worried than ever. Sonny had had his problems over the years, but she'd never known him to talk to himself. She had tried to help him when she could, she really had, but he put a lot of effort into actively repelling help. On the other hand, all through the years at Highland, even when the bullying had been at its distressing worst, his extraordinary resilience had pulled him through. Then they'd moved to Lawndale and she'd hoped for a completely fresh start for him. In the first few days he'd seemed perversely determined not to give a chance for things to be different. Then, dumbfoundingly, he'd made a friend. It was almost as if he'd wanted to prove to them that he could make friends any time he wanted to, but he would do it when he felt like it, not because anybody else thought it would be good for him.

Just the same, he hadn't made any more friends, even though he'd seemed, on that trip to Grove Hills, capable of getting on well with Jodie Landon. Helen couldn't help thinking that it would be better for Sonny to spend his time with somebody like Jodie than with somebody like Jane, but the odds were that exactly the same factors that affected Helen's own attitude would draw Sonny perversely away from Jodie and towards Jane.

Sometimes Helen wondered whether Sonny had taken up with Jane because, despite everything, he was still another teenage boy and was finally developing a normal teenage boy's interest in girls. Maybe he only wanted one friend because he only wanted one girl. He was adamant that they weren't dating, but he could be hiding something, even from himself. She knew that Sonny disapproved of Quinn's social habits, especially the way she dated, and from early childhood he'd so often defined himself in opposition to Quinn.

Helen snapped back out of her reverie to the present at that thought, realising that it probably hadn't been a good plan to ask Quinn to spend time with Sonny while he was behaving strangely. Maybe making his first friend was a sign that his undeniable capacity to deal with his own problems was near its limits, maybe his talking to himself was a cry for help, but Quinn wasn't the person to get through to him. Quinn was aware that his current behaviour was 'cuckoo', but it didn't bother her. She expected Sonny to be abnormal. She'd kept a scrupulous accounting of her time spent with Sonny, and was unconcerned that she had nothing to show for it except a new pleather jacket—she hadn't expected to.

Where did that leave Helen?

Jake seemed to think that Sonny's problems might have something to do with somebody he referred to as 'Foxy Mamma', which made Helen sure that this was one of the occasions she'd be better off without Jake's contribution.

* * *

><p>Jane was pleased that Sonny had come to find her after her math class so that he could ask how the test had gone, even if, as she explained to him, she didn't have to worry about her results. He was lost for only a moment before his subtle brain found the 'two plus two', but it surprised her that he disapproved so strongly of her getting a little extra benefit out of her new status as a star of a sports team.<p>

'Hey', she said, 'where do you get off giving me lectures about ethics when you're the one who cheated his way out of gym class completely?'

'I could explain the difference to you', he said, 'but I get the feeling you wouldn't actually want me to', and with that he turned and left.

From behind her she heard Evan asking what the problem was. She turned and told him that Sonny was being self-righteous—she didn't bother explaining about what.

Evan wasn't interested in the details. He thought that the new star of the track team shouldn't be wasting her time hanging around with 'losers' anyway.

Jane took a good look at him. That black shirt really suited him. There was no denying he was nice to look at.

'Yeah, you're right', she said. 'I've been spending too much time with losers.'

Evan thought she was agreeing with him. Obviously he didn't have a subtle brain. She went off to talk to Coach Morris.

* * *

><p>Sonny moved in relentless circles around his bedroom floor as his mind circled relentlessly around the subject of his clash with Jane.<p>

'I did get out of gym on false pretences. But what I did was something which the school would disapprove of if it ever figured it out. I never let them get me to buy into the system. Officially the school would have to disapprove of grade-fixing for athletes if it ever came out, but unofficially the school not only approves of it but initiates it.'

He couldn't help explaining the riposte to himself. 'How much difference does that make? If Jane comes out of high school with a diploma based on grades based on test performances she never achieved, how is that different from my coming out of high school with a diploma based on an exemption based on a medical problem I didn't really have? Ever since Jane joined that damn team I've been questioning myself over one thing after another.'

He was relieved to be interrupted by a knock on the bedroom door. 'I'll get it', he told himself. When he opened it, he saw Jane. 'Act natural', he told himself. 'You're not hurt.'

Jane was mystified. On reflection, so was he. Jane passed over it. She told him that she'd made a mistake agreeing to the grade-fixing arrangement.

Sonny decided. 'They gave you the chance to cut a corner. I can't blame you for taking it.'

'This all happened because I was trying to prove a point to Coach Morris.'

'And that Evan guy factors in exactly how?'

'That jerk? I can't believe you thought he was cute.'

'Yeah. Aren't I a dope?' Sonny paused for a moment as he realised that Jane should have been at practice. He was about to ask her about that when she looked closely at him and narrowed her eyes.

'Wait a minute', she said. 'I'm picking up on something. Your face might not show much to the average person, but my artist's eye has learned not to be fooled. There's something you're not telling me.'

Sonny said, 'Correct.'

'I'm getting a flashback. If you're not telling me something … and you didn't even want to tell me that you weren't telling me, or give me any kind of hint … you don't want it to make a difference … okay, don't worry about it, I quit the team.'

'You did what?'

'I quit the team. I didn't want to finish high school as ignorant as Kevin.'

Sonny shook his head. 'You knew more than Kevin does now before you finished kindergarten.'

'The point is', Jane said, 'I quit the team before I had any idea about you and Evan.'

Sonny didn't react.

'Ooookay', Jane said, 'you know I'm not going to do anything about it, but tell me, purely to satisfy my curiosity, when did it happen?'

Sonny told her.

Jane made a contemplative noise. 'So that would have been right before you came and apologised to me for humiliating me in front of him?'

'In point of fact, I was looking for you at the time in order to apologise to you.'

Jane nodded a few times. 'So, then, what's up with your dad? He was really weird when he let me in. I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. And who's "Foxy Mamma"?'

'Just be grateful he didn't ask you about your pregnancy.'

'My what?'

Sonny's father burst through the door. 'So, er, hi! Not interrupting anything, am I? Good, good! I mean, it's good to see you again, Jane! What's, er, what's new?'

* * *

><p>Jane was explaining to Sonny why she wouldn't be able to walk home from school with him, even though she no longer had to practise with the track team.<p>

'They really wanted me back on the team. Morris threatened me with having to repeat math, but I told her I could pull up my grade on my own. Then she threatened me with flunking me in _her _class. So I said I'd expose her grade-changing arrangement. She said everybody already knows—Li, the PTA, whatever. _I _said I could call the three local television stations and tell each one that the other two are running the story.'

'Smooth move. You've learned a lot. Don't ever let anybody tell you that you can't get an education at high school.'

Jane gave him a lopsided grin. 'The problem I'm left with is that I actually do have a lot of work she can sort-of-legitimately get me to make up for gym class. While I was the big star of the track team she let me sit out a lot of the "Focus on Agility" classes because I said my legs were tired after meets. I don't think I can get out of make-up classes unless I actually do call the television stations, and I'd rather avoid _total _teenage exile.'

'So you're back to being just a normal outcast, hanging out and having pizza with your fellow-outcast—when you don't have classes to make up.'

Jane nodded. 'Incidentally, you know the last thing Evan said to me? He said, "I just don't get you." '

'He's right, he really doesn't.'

'That's exactly what I said. By the way, you know that if you're walking home alone you may run into him. I mean, I know you're not hiding from him, but I know you wouldn't want to seek him out.'

Sonny just shrugged.

Jane said, 'So, now that I've got to spend all this time making up gym classes, do you think you'd be able to give me a little help with math?'

* * *

><p>Now that the story was all over, Sonny sat down to write an email and tell Luhrmann about it. Well, about some parts of it. Email had its uses, but it wasn't the same as real life.<p>

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'See Jane Run' by Rachelle Romberg<strong>_


	25. Looking Another Way

**Not So Different**

_**25. Looking Another Way**_

The phone call would most probably be from a boy asking Quinn for a date. That would be good, because it would halt her conversation with Helen about the mother-daughter fashion show at school.

A phone call from an ally-cum-rival Fashion Club member was also a strong possibility, and would be good for the same reason.

A phone call for Sonny himself was rare enough to surprise him, although not anywhere near enough to challenge his poker face. Only Jane ever called for him. That was good too, though. Even if the family kept talking about the fashion show, Sonny now had an excuse to absent himself. He took the portable phone upstairs.

The element of surprise was increased significantly when the phone call turned out not to be from Jane, but from Trent. Why would Trent be calling him? Sonny could only suppose it was something to do with Jane, but what? He tried to ask Trent, but Trent's replies were punctuated with mysterious long pauses, and when he did say anything it was hopelessly vague. He ended the conversation telling Sonny 'That sounds excellent' in reference to nothing whatsoever.

Sonny sat on his bed staring at the phone for a minute, and then it rang again. He grabbed it.

'Hello? Trent? Hello? Anybody there? Trent, is that you?'

But it wasn't Trent. This time it _was _Jane. 'Hey, Sonny', she said, 'did Trent just call you?'

'Yes, but I don't know why. He was really weird.'

'That's just what I told him. So when he wouldn't explain to me, I hit the redial button. All I know is that now he's left the house and wouldn't say where he was going. He could be heading over to your place for whatever strange purpose.'

'Oh. Well, fine. Stay on the line in the meantime, it'll annoy Quinn to have the phone tied up.'

A short while later Trent did show up at the Morgendorffers'. He explained to Sonny about the phone conversation: the purpose of the call had been to discuss plans to shop for a birthday present for Jane, but Trent wanted to keep these a secret from her and he'd been repeatedly interrupted by her walking into the room, which had prevented him from making things clear to Sonny. He wanted Sonny to help him pick out something new instead of the art supplies he always ended up getting her. Sonny was happy to agree.

'Thanks, Sonny. I'll pick you up tomorrow morning. Not too early, some time before lunch … or after.'

'Okay.'

'Or better yet, why don't we leave it loose?'

Despite Trent's vagueness about the arrangement—or perhaps because of it—Sonny was looking forward to it, an unaccustomed feeling for him. He knew that Jane was looking forward to birthday presents. They'd been talking about her birthday only recently, and Jane had expounded her theory that the idea of celebrating birthdays was an arbitrary invention for commercial purposes. Sonny had suggested that birthdays were the only holidays _not _created by the greeting card industry, and Jane had replied 'That's what they _want _you to believe.' Despite this, and although she had made it clear that she did _not _want a party to pretend that she was popular, she did expect presents. Sonny found himself actually excited—or as close to that as his emotional range ran—at the prospect of going out with Trent to choose a present for Jane. It was really nice that Trent wanted to get a present for Jane, a special present that took effort to select, and that he wanted to include Jane's best friend in the exercise. Too bad the Morgendorffer family didn't work more like that.

When Trent arrived to collect Sonny the next day, Quinn made the natural assumption that the honking of a car horn was a signal to her, even though she didn't have a date scheduled. Sonny corrected her, guessing rightly that it must be Trent come to get him, even though it was a couple of hours earlier than he'd been expecting. Trent explained that he'd come straight from rehearsal. 'We ran late, or early … whatever.'

Trent could list the things he did not want to buy as a present for Jane, starting with art supplies as already mentioned, but he had no particular positive ideas, which was why he was involving Sonny. So they just drove to Dega Street and started looking around.

The first possible present Trent pointed out in a shop window was a guitar. Sonny suggested hesitantly that a guitar was more something for Trent himself.

'That's a really good point', Trent said. Sonny began to understand why Trent had asked him along, and he understood even more when he had to steer Trent away from the tie-dyed garments in the retro clothing store. He would have described himself as somebody who knew nothing about clothes, but he thought he had some idea about what Jane _wouldn't_ want. Then Trent's glance fell on 'Axl's Piercing Parlor'. Sonny suspected that Trent was once again thinking about what he himself would like rather than what Jane would like, but it was true that Jane did already have piercings for earrings, three of them in one ear—the left, Sonny thought. Or did she have them in both ears? In any case, Trent had them too, definitely three in each ear, so Sonny expressed his reservations carefully. Trent's unexpected response was to ask him whether he, Sonny, had ever considered getting pierced.

'Why would I want to do that?' Sonny said. 'If anybody wants to pick on me, they can always find a pretext. I don't need to give them new ones.'

'Hmm …' Trent nodded slowly. 'So you don't want to get pierced because of what some bullies might think about it.'

Sonny stopped short. He'd never considered this perspective before. 'That's not exactly my point …' he said slowly, and paused. While he was still distracted, Trent wandered into Axl's, without explaining whether he was looking there with Jane in mind, or himself, or what. Sonny trailed after him.

Trent must have been a regular customer, or at least a regular visitor, because Axl recognised him immediately and drew his attention to a two-for-one special offer: get one piercing for twenty-two dollars and another piercing free for a friend.

'Cool', said Trent. 'What do you think now, Sonny?'

'I _think _we came out today to find a birthday present for Jane. Isn't that right?'

Sonny noticed that Trent did not answer his question directly. Instead he pointed to his own eyebrow and said, 'I've been wanting to put a hole right here.'

'Right', Sonny said. 'You can never have too many holes in your head.'

'But Axl's got this two-for-one offer, Sonny. It's the perfect opportunity for me to get the piercing I want and for you to branch out and try something new. It'll be fun.'

'Fun?' Sonny said, and was going to enlarge on the subject, but looking at Trent he couldn't.

Axl was evidently keen to make a sale. He suggested that Sonny browse the piercing menu and see if there was anything he liked the look of.

Sonny thought of something. 'You know my parents, Trent.'

Trent nodded.

'Well, unfortunate as it is, I depend on them for food and shelter, and while that's still true I can't go home with a piercing.'

Trent said, 'I see your point.'

Axl said, 'But you could get a piercing in your nipple or something like that, where your parents couldn't see it.'

'Or anybody else you're worried about', Trent added.

'Look', Sonny said, his subconscious mind having been chewing over what Trent said to him outside about bullies, 'if I actually had a reason to want to get pierced, I wouldn't stop because some people might make fun of it or pick on me. I'm not going to _avoid_ a piercing because of the way it makes me look to other people—the ones on whom I'm not financially dependent—but I'm also not going to _get_ a piercing because of the way it makes me look to other people. Right now I look the way I am, and why should I change that?'

'If nobody else could see it', Trent said, 'it'd be something you could keep secret. It wouldn't change the way you looked to anybody else except the people you wanted to share it with.'

Sonny focussed on staying blank as his innards misgave with uncertainty about Trent's possible meanings. Trent was in that state of almost somnolent relaxation which made him hard to read.

Axl was starting to get restless at the indecision when a woman walked into the shop, recognised Trent, and hugged him in greeting. Trent addressed her as 'Monique' and started talking to her about a band she was in, which she said she was thinking of leaving in favour of forming her own. Trent spoke encouragingly of her talent, and she replied that she'd learned from 'the best', at which point Trent realised it might help to explain to Sonny that he, Trent, and this Monique used to be in a band together. She had the look of somebody who'd fit in with Trent's kind of band, and also in a tattoo and piercing parlour. Sonny noticed she had a nose ring.

As Trent went on to introduce Sonny to Monique (as 'my kid sister's friend'), Sonny was thinking that Trent and Monique must have been more than bandmates. They'd hugged each other like two people who had been close. Sonny could see how somebody like Trent might like somebody like Monique, and how somebody like Monique might like somebody like Trent. He had difficulty knowing how to speak to her, but managed an abbreviated response to her greeting.

While Sonny was wondering whether Monique was Trent's 'type', and how much there might have been between them, Trent was telling her that Sonny was 'like, the coolest high-schooler I know'. Sonny assumed Trent meant well (although how many high-schoolers did he know?), but wasn't that comparison a bit like describing something as 'wetter than the Sahara' or 'shallower than the Marianas Trench'? Monique, Sonny could see, was nothing like any kind of high-schooler. He guessed that _she_ would be much more use to Trent as a standard of 'cool'.

To begin with, she had at least one piercing. That was the reason she'd come in, because she needed more antiseptic for her nose ring. While Axl was fetching some, she asked Trent what he was there for.

Trent said, 'I was kind of interested in the two-for-one special, but Sonny's not sure he wants to get pierced.'

'First time, huh?' Monique said to Sonny. 'It can seem like a big step. But if you want my advice, I think a navel piercing can look cool.'

Axl agreed that a navel ring would at least be a start, although some people thought they were more of a girl's thing.

'Some people', said Monique, 'but I wouldn't listen to them.'

Sonny looked from Monique to Trent and back again, thinking vaguely that a navel ring might not be as bad as a nipple ring, but still unsure of himself.

Monique put a hand on Trent's shoulder. 'You'll be okay with Trent, anyway. You're in good hands with him.' The two of them hugged again, and then Monique took the antiseptic from Axl and left.

Sonny watched Monique as she walked out. When she was gone, he looked back at Trent. He wasn't sure afterwards what he'd said next, or even just what he'd thought, but somehow he found himself in Axl's back room, feeling a little giddy as Axl prepared to pierce his navel. Axl suddenly remembered that he was supposed to ask whether Sonny was eighteen, because otherwise he'd need parental permission … or sort of, reading between the lines of what Axl said: 'This establishment is licensed to serve adults only and operates strictly according to the letter of the law.' Apparently the letter of the law was satisfied by Trent assuring Axl that Sonny was indeed eighteen. (For all Sonny knew, Trent might have thought that was the truth: it'd be like him.)

Sonny had no worries about the pain involved in the procedure, until Axl reassured him that it would be no worse than popping a pimple, at which Sonny found himself involuntarily crying out as he remembered that he didn't actually like pain.

'I haven't done anything yet', Axl said.

Sonny explained that he couldn't help thinking about how much it hurt to pop a pimple. He might be inured to being beaten up, but at the last moment he realised that this was a different experience. Nobody had ever attacked him with a sharp instrument, for one thing; anyway, the situation was psychologically different. He couldn't deal with the pain by the attitude he generated towards the person inflicting it, since Axl was only acting on Sonny's own instructions; and perhaps he still wasn't fully reconciled to the idea of getting pierced. Now that he thought about it, why had he agreed to it? He started shaking, and Axl complained that it stopped him from concentrating.

Trent offered to help. He clasped Sonny's shoulder. Sonny reached up his hand to Trent's forearm.

'The best thing to do is not think about it', Trent said. 'Then it won't hurt.'

Sonny realised that he'd stopped shaking. 'It doesn't hurt.' He felt a little dazed. Trent seemed oddly affected too, but with Trent it was hard to tell because he was always so laid-back (some might say unfocussed). Then Sonny realised that Axl was giving him instructions: not to remove the ring for the first six months (in case the hole closed up), not to worry about mucus flowing from the hole, something about antiseptic and a dietary supplement …

'You did it? I'm pierced?'

Sonny took his hand from Trent's forearm and gently touched the little silver hoop. Then he stood up and carefully adjusted his clothes to conceal it. He sat quietly thinking while Trent got the other half of the two-for-one special. The ring started to itch.

When Trent was ready to go, Sonny reminded him that the original purpose of their excursion was to find a birthday present for Jane. Trent told him that he'd found his inspiration now. He explained what he was going to do for Jane's present and that it was a secret from everybody until her birthday. Sonny promised not to tell.

As well as Trent's birthday present plan for Jane, Sonny kept secret his own new piercing, although the ring kept itching and he kept wanting to scratch. He knew that his parents would be unhappy if they found out, and Quinn was the last person he would confide in. It didn't feel as if the itching was getting less with time. Sometimes it itched like fury and he thought about taking out the ring, just for a little while to give himself a rest, but he remembered what Axl had said about how the piercing might close up if he did that. After everything, he didn't want that to happen. He had his secret piercing and he was going to keep it. He'd had that moment's uncertainty about handling the pain of the piercing, but now, after everything else he'd handled in his life, he could handle this itch.

He lay in bed wanting to take the ring out and remembered Trent's advice not to think about it. That would mean thinking about something else. He thought about Lyric Lightbody, and whether she was likely to be pierced (he decided not). He thought about whether he could work a scene in a piercing parlour into a story. He thought about meeting Monique at the piercing parlour. He thought about Trent's birthday present for Jane. He thought about his own birthday present for Jane. He thought about Monique and Trent … and about Jane … and about Jane and Trent … Jaynt … Train …

And he woke up, and the ring was hardly itching at all.

* * *

><p>On Jane's birthday, there being no party, Sonny went with her to see Mystik Spiral perform. There were sporadic isolated claps as the band came on stage and warmed up. Trent stepped to the microphone to give the band's regular introduction and then continued, 'I want to say happy birthday to my little sister, Jane.'<p>

Jesse added, 'This is for you, Jane.'

The band started to play and Trent sang:

**_Little sister, little sister  
><em>_You came into my life like a twister …_**

The characteristically execrable lyrics rolled on, and Sonny put his hard-won skills to work on mostly screening them out. They had something to do with how hard it was to find a proper birthday present for Jane.

But Trent really meant it. His sister was special.

Sonny looked across at Jane. She was wearing her quizzical expression, as if she were asking, _Is _that _my birthday present?_

Sonny said, 'He's singing about our shopping expedition.'

'What?'

'You remember he phoned me a few days ago and you didn't know why? He did come round to my house. He told me that he always gets you art supplies for your birthday, that he wanted to get you something different, like a surprise, and he wanted my advice. So we went out to Dega Street together and looked around. The song is all about how each of the things we saw wasn't quite right.'

'And it's thanks to your shopping trip that I'm getting this song as my birthday present?'

'Well', Sonny said, 'he did tell me that he'd found inspiration as we were coming out of Axl's.'

'Hey, I noticed Trent had a new eyebrow piercing.' Jane shrugged. 'So the two of you went shopping for my birthday and Trent got me a hole in his head. That is kind of a surprise.'

'I suppose you could see it that way.' Sonny shrugged too. 'There is something else. I've been waiting for your birthday to tell you about it, actually.'

Jane nodded for Sonny to continue.

'Axl was offering a two-for-one special. Twenty-two dollars for one hole, and a friend gets one free. Trent wanted his eyebrow piercing, and … and then I don't know what happened, exactly, but …'

'You got a piercing? _You? _I don't believe it! Where is it, anyway?'

'Hey, not so loud! I want to keep it a secret.' Sonny went on to explain, as well as he could remember, what had happened at Axl's. When he'd finished, he waited for Jane to ask to see his navel, or even to suggest a drawing or a painting. But she didn't.

Instead, she gave him a look he couldn't decipher. 'The two of you went shopping for my birthday and got me a hole in _your_ navel as a present? That _really_ is a surprise. You know, you just may join the human race after all. Or maybe you're getting ready for it to join you. Oh, and by the way …'

'Yes?'

'Thanks again for getting me the really cool art supplies.'

Sonny shrugged. 'Somebody had to.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Pierce Me' by Neena Beber<strong>_


	26. Magic Eightball

**Not So Different**

_**26. Magic Eightball**_

'There's just one thing I don't understand', said Jane.

'Of course', Sonny said. 'You're not Kevin.'

'I understand that you'd read all the books on O'Neill's list for this assignment. But why did you have to tell _him _that? All you had to do was choose one of them, and then write your report on a book you'd already read. Minimum effort: the Jane Lane solution.'

'Maybe I'm just not as smart as you.'

'But still smarter than Kevin. Say, why don't you put him in your story? You should be able to get some sort of moral lesson out of the story of his wedding to Brittany. Or, failing that, at least a few good laughs.'

Sonny sighed. 'Did you make the effort to read the Gardner book? I know Kevin made it plain in class that _he _hadn't …'

'You don't know that for sure', said Jane.

'He showed no understanding of it.'

'But with Kevin that proves nothing.'

'Granted. But it was the usual drill in class. O'Neill put the question first to Kevin, out of suicidal stupidity, and then to me, out of desperation. So even if you didn't read the book, I've given you the Cliff Notes. Gardner thinks fiction should be for more than entertainment. It should steer the reader towards more conscientious behaviour. That means the moral intention is mandatory for my assignment. Sure, I can always get a few cheap laughs out of Kevin and Brittany, but that won't be enough.'

Jane turned up one corner of her mouth and flashed her eyebrows at him. 'Don't you think giving people a few laughs is a moral intention? I think you've got a sweet assignment. Put people you know in a fictional story. Think about what you could do to them. Anything you like. If it were me, I'd make them crawl, I tell you, crawl!'

'You need to start wearing a hat when you go out in the sun. Look, I haven't been able to write anything yet, so I might as well give your idea a go. Only, no interruptions, okay? You paint, I'll write.'

* * *

><p><em>The minister turned to the groom. 'Do you, Kevin Thompson, star Lawndale High quarterback, take this woman, Brittany Taylor, Lawndale High head cheerleader, to be your lawfully wedded wife—hallowing with the glow of storybook romance the history of'—she paused to take a deep breath before intoning the next words like a ritual invocation—'Lawndale High?'<em>

_The groom tugged at his collar and looked from side to side. In the front row of the pews behind him, his best man, Michael 'Mack' Mackenzie, held up a large prompt card with two words written hugely on it._

'_Oh, hey, thanks Mack Daddy!' Kevin said. He faced the minister again. 'Like, I do!'_

_Behind him Mack covered his face with his hands._

_The minister turned to Brittany. 'And do you, Brittany Taylor, Lawndale High head cheerleader, take this man, Kevin Thompson, star Lawndale High quarterback, to be your lawfully wedded husband—hallowing with the glow of storybook romance the history of'—she repeated the deep breath to prepare the intonation—'Lawndale High?'_

_Brittany stared at the minister. She glanced for a moment at Kevin, then back at the minister, and then turned to look at something or somebody in the hall behind her. The pause went on for long enough for a nervous whisper to rustle around the congregation. Nobody held up a prompt card._

_Then Brittany said, 'I'm gay.'_

_In the rear of the hall, a redheaded figure rose to her feet and called out, 'Brittany! Come on!'_

'_Quinn!' Brittany cried as she ran to her. They flew into each other's arms._

'_Hey, Mack Daddy!' Kevin said. 'Check out the hot girl-on-girl action!'_

'_I've told you a million times not to call me that!' Mack leaped forward, grabbed Kevin, and shook him. 'I've had enough of you, you dunderheaded doofus! Don't you realise that's the girl you were just about to marry?'_

'_Oh, that's nothing!' Kevin said. 'If you think that's hot, you should see the pictures I found of her stepmom!'_

_As the father of the not-to-be-bride lunged murderously at the nominal groom, Quinn and Brittany ran hand-in-hand out of the door towards a waiting bus …_

* * *

><p>Sonny stared at what he'd written, then ripped paper from his notebook. <em>Great<em>, he thought. _So I can mash up _The Graduate _with _In & Out_. Not a spark of originality._

'Well', said Jane, 'how's the moral purpose coming along?'

'I guess "don't be as stupid as Kevin" is a good message for any reader, but the story's just bad. Maybe I should go back a couple of hundred years and see if I can find clearer ideas about morality there.'

* * *

><p>'<em>I assure you, dear brother Jacob, that the woman you so admire harbours similar sentiments for you. If you press your suit it is sure to meet with favour. She is no heartless flirt. You may trust me to recognise any such.'<em>

_Jacob Morgendorffer shook his head. 'That is well enough, sister, but can I in good conscience ask her to bind herself to such a long engagement as must be necessary? You know well the smallness of the sum our good parents can afford to settle on me, and it will be years yet before my practice at the Bar will provide me with the income that would justify me in putting myself forward as a husband in prospective.'_

'_Alas, your judgement and good sense holds you back from wedded bliss, and the lack I have shown of the same hinders me! If only I had listened to your warnings! If I can be sure to know a heartless flirt, it is because I foolishly played that part myself for too long, and now I am fitly punished for it.'_

'_Is there not one among your many suitors who remains constant?'_

_Miss Morgendorffer sighed. 'I fear not. I should have heeded your advice to take note of the model that lay before me in the conduct of our neighbour Miss Landon, so soon now to receive the reward of her virtue by becoming Mrs Mackenzie.'_

'_You may console yourself with the thought that at least you have not fallen into the folly of your friend Miss Griffin.'_

'_I did my best to show her that she should not accept an offer from the odious Mr Ruttheimer, but she could think only of money …'_

_As Miss Morgendorffer's words trailed away, brother and sister shared a look of …_

* * *

><p>'I don't know whether this stuff would have passed muster two hundred years ago, but it won't pass muster now.' Sonny stood up. 'I'm going home. Maybe the change of surroundings will stimulate my thought processes. Maybe the walk will clear my head. Or maybe I'll get really lucky and a drunk driver will jump the kerb and hospitalise me for long enough that I don't have to finish this assignment. At least if I get out of here my creative block can't jinx your painting.'<p>

'Yeah, I might get so lucky that a meteor smashes through the window and my skull, splattering my brains over the canvas to create the greatest work of art ever seen.'

'Thanks for trying to cheer me up.'

On that comradely note, they parted.

No new inspiration came to Sonny before he got home. As he slumped over the kitchen table with his chin in one hand, even his mother—between urgent phone calls—noticed that something was wrong. (If he wanted to be fair to his mother—but why would he want to do that?—Sonny would have had to acknowledge that she kept trying to get rid of the caller, who was obviously provoking her, by insisting the discussion should be deferred to office hours.) Sonny had told her earlier about reading John Gardner's _On Moral Fiction_, but he hadn't mentioned to her his special assignment. When he explained that he had to write a story using people he knew as characters, his mother said that it sounded fascinating; but then she'd said something similar back when he first told her about Gardner's book. (A writer writing a book about how writers should write books? She called that fascinating?) When he said that he couldn't come up with a story, she asked him what the other students were doing. He explained that the other students only had to write a book report on the moral dimension of a book from Mr O'Neill's list, but he'd already read all of them, so he had to _write _a story with a moral dimension instead.

'An extra assignment just for me. As a punishment for being smart.'

Sonny wasn't sure whether his mother's reaction to this meant that she was shocked or that she was impressed, but the words she followed with were an expression of confidence in his ability to perform if he made the effort.

As he moved from slumped forward to slumped back, he lifted his folded arms from the table and dropped his hands in his lap. 'You are very, very wrong.'

Helen's response was interrupted for the third or fourth time by the phone, but when she'd got rid of the caller she started in again to tell Sonny that he just had to put his mind to it. 'When Quinn has a challenge …', she was saying, thumping the table with one hand and brandishing the phone with the other, when Sonny interrupted.

'Quinn? All her challenges involve coordinating her shoes with the colour of her date's eyes.'

'Sonny, what I mean is …' Helen's face was turning inside-out, but Sonny was picking up steam and drove straight through.

'How can you talk to me about Quinn? She'll never have this kind of problem. It involves thinking. You make me tell you what's wrong—in between calls—and then you bring up Quinn? Don't you know me at all?' He rose and walked past her, heading for the stairs and his room. He didn't look back as he said, 'At least Dad never tells me to be more like Quinn.'

In his room he snatched out his notepad as he fell on the bed and began writing:

* * *

><p>'<em>Hey, Mom! Mom!'<em>

'_What is it? And please don't shout, I'm trying to prepare for an important case.'_

'_That's why I wanted to talk to you. You know how you say you wish I could be more like my sister?'_

_Helen Morgendorffer set her pen down on her papers and looked up at her older child. 'That's not exactly what I said …'_

'_Never mind that argument now. The question is, does your firm defend paternity suits?'_

* * *

><p>Sonny grunted. 'Well, that's going nowhere.' He ripped paper from his notebook for the third time that day.<p>

* * *

><p><em>Stacy looked shyly down and then back up. 'Sonny, I've been thinking about what you said to me at the fair.'<em>

'_I thought you'd want to forget all about that. I mean, talking to somebody who isn't popular, and who's even a brain … Hey, you're doing it again! You better watch out.'_

'_But you really are smart! So the things you say should be smart! Maybe it would be a good idea if I learned to talk with boys and even be friends with them without having anything to do with dating. And I thought about all the times I've seen you around, like at school, and when I'm at Quinn's, and I thought … well, even if you don't want to date or anything …'_

* * *

><p>'Where the <em>hell <em>did _that _come from? _Gregory's Girl_? Or _what_? Damn O'Neill!' Sonny carefully set down his notebook and stepped slowly backward away from it. He didn't try to write any more before he went to bed, or even to think about the assignment. That night he had uneasy dreams: a _Macbeth_-style witch (of course: not original) stirred a bubbling cauldron under a stormy night sky and a succession of cloaked figures rode black or seal-brown horses across a 'blasted heath' to ask her for prophecies—which Sonny, waking, could not remember.

In the morning he kept trying not to think about the assignment, but walking to school he broke down and confessed to Jane that he felt like a sham who couldn't even write a simple story.

'Wow, Sonny.' Jane raised an eyebrow. 'I never figured you for a lack of imagination.'

Sonny tried to explain that he was having no trouble imagining ideas, but they weren't the kind he wanted, but when Jane asked him for details, he floundered. Eventually Jane made an incisive summation of his wandering remarks.

'Let me get this straight: you're saying that you want to write something that says something, not just anything, but something _about_ something.'

Sonny assented.

Jane's mouth and eyebrows twitched. 'Gee. Who'd ever believe that you're having trouble communicating?'

Not thinking about the assignment gave Sonny a full-time mental occupation all day, until the moment that evening he found himself lying on his back on his bed, still imploding into the vacuum of failure. He knew that some writers were supposed to solve their writing problems while they weren't thinking about them, but it hadn't worked for him.

He was interrupted—or he would have been if he'd been doing anything to be interrupted—by a knock on the door. It was his father, to see if he wanted to talk.

'Did Mom send you?' Sonny called through the still closed door.

'No! She did tell me about the problem you've been having, and I thought maybe it might help for you to have a talk with your old Dad instead.'

Sonny doubted it. He said he just needed some time alone. _Then I could do a crossword_, he thought. His father tried to persevere, but their dialogue—such as it was—was interrupted by a shout from Helen downstairs.

'Jake! What's this on the stove? What are you _doing_?'

Sonny heard his father's choking exclamation through the door and immediately envisaged the over-inflated balloon facial expression that would go with it. 'Gaah! Sorry, Sonny, got to go! If you want to talk or … uh, anything … later …' Sonny could hear hasty footsteps receding along the hallway and down the stairs.

_Maybe_, he thought, _I should have another go at taking further Jane's idea of making people crawl …_

* * *

><p><em>The two spirits of the departed chanced to arrive in the afterlife all but simultaneously. Without sight or hearing, they had no past experience to explain the sudden and certain perception that judgement was about to be pronounced on both of them.<em>

_The words that formed soundlessly in their consciousnesses nevertheless seemed to possess a quality that could only be compared to endless resonance._

**JANET BARCH, YOU WILL RETURN TO EARTH TO LIVE A NEW LIFE AS A MAN! CHARLES RUTTHEIMER, YOU WILL RETURN TO EARTH TO LIVE A NEW LIFE AS A WOMAN!**

_Still speechless, each formulated a despairing wail: __**'Nooooooo …'**_

* * *

><p>Sonny stared at the page and then ripped it out. No matter how many people would pay to see that one, he couldn't tell himself that the concept was original.<p>

_All right,_ he thought to himself, _one more try tonight._

* * *

><p><em>Angela Li was in a brown study as she parked her car in front of her house.<em>

_Now that she'd rearranged the school budget to fund ankle bracelets for students in detention and permanent retainers for two private investigators, her next problem was finding somebody who'd accept the vacant teaching position on fiscally possible terms—ideally, somebody totally ductile. She was so deep in thought that she'd actually got as far as lifting the lid of the bin to dump a trash bag before she noticed the ragged homeless bum who'd been scrounging in it._

'_I'm sorry!' he burst out, and started to cry. 'I've tried to find work, really I have, but I'm not qualified for anything!'_

_She looked him up and down. A man utterly broken, whom she could rebuild to her specifications._

'_What's your name?' If he had any self-respect left, he might hesitate to admit it._

'_Timothy O'Neill …'_

* * *

><p><em>When action becomes unprofitable, <em>Sonny quoted to himself, _gather information; when gathering information becomes unprofitable, sleep. _He slept.

In the morning, the only option for action that seemed likely to be profitable was to go to O'Neill and try to talk his way out of the assignment. In hindsight, he could only think that the pressure must have driven him temporarily insane.

He explained his problem to O'Neill this way: 'I've written a lot of stuff, but it's not up to my standards. And that disturbs me, because I don't have standards.'

When O'Neill probed for more details, Sonny said that he couldn't figure out what his characters should be doing.

'Okay', said O'Neill, 'that's not a problem. We'll alter the assignment slightly.' (_We? _thought Sonny. _What do you mean, we?_) 'Sometimes boundaries can paradoxically provide us with freedom. We'll say it should include an activity of some kind. Let's see … a forest fire? No, that could end in tragedy. Some kind of orthoscopic surgery?' (It figured that O'Neill would mispronounce it.) 'No, that can get messy. I know, a game of cards!'

'A game of cards?'

'Sure!' O'Neill smiled as if he'd just given Sonny the birthday present he'd always wanted. 'And it can be any card game you want.'

Sonny gave O'Neill the thousand-yard stare. 'Gee, thanks', he lied. 'That'll really help.'

'Glad to hear it. Have fun.'

* * *

><p><em>Angela Li frowned as she hurried along the hallway, then recomposed her features as she opened the door and went into the room.<em>

'_I'm glad I didn't keep you waiting', she said as she moved quickly to her seat. She looked around the table at the other local high school principals. Something was missing. 'It wasn't my turn to bring the poker chips', she said._

'_We're going to have one hand of Old Maid before we start the poker game', said the man next to her._

'_Old Maid?'_

'_Yeah, the loser has to give a job to Tim O'Neill.'_

* * *

><p>Sonny's mother found him slumped on the couch in front of the television. He shushed her so that he could watch the show.<p>

The television wasn't on.

She apologised to him, but he still hadn't forgiven her for comparing him to Quinn. She repeated the apology and offered to help him. He tried to explain to her how he couldn't write the kind of story he wanted to write.

'Maybe you're trying too hard', his mother said. 'Maybe you don't have to write something meaningful, just something honest.'

'I can do honest. I look around me, I describe what I see. People hitting me, for example.'

'Oh, Sonny', his mother sighed.

Sonny shifted his shoulders. 'And, to be honest, that's been happening less and less frequently.'

'And how do you feel about that?'

'Is that a trick question?'

'Sonny, the easiest thing in the world for you is being honest about what you observe. What's hard for you is being honest about your wishes. About the way you think things should be, not the way they are. You gloss over it with a cynical joke and nobody finds out what you really believe in.' Sonny opened his mouth but before he could speak his mother added, 'Maybe not even you.'

Sonny could feel his eyes widening despite himself. 'I was about to say that my evil plan was working, but … when the hell did you learn so much about me?'

'If you really want to be honest, Sonny', his mother said, 'be truthful about what you'd like to happen. _There's _a challenge.'

* * *

><p><em>As Sonny Morgendorffer walked through the door he met his father Jake coming down the stairs. Both smiled with pleasure.<em>

'_Hey, Sonny! How's my boy?'_

_The two men hugged._

'_All the better for seeing you, Dad. And how are you? Still enjoying your retirement?'_

'_You bet! Come on in.'_

_They walked through to the kitchen, where Sonny's mother Helen greeted them._

'_How are you, Sonny?'_

'_Coping … like a grown-up. How are you, Mom?'_

'_Pretty good. And, as you would say, all the better for seeing you.'_

'_Anybody else for coffee?' Sonny asked as he moved to the percolator. He poured three cups as his parents took seats at the kitchen table._

_Helen said, 'I enjoyed your column this week', as Sonny joined them, setting down the coffee cups._

'_It's preaching to the converted. I get outraged, the readers get outraged, and nothing happens. Still, I admit there is some pleasure in winning awards for saying the same sort of thing that would get me called to the principal's office at school—if it didn't get me beaten up.' He gave a cheerful wink. 'You remember all the charts and tables I used to compile showing all the statistics about how I got beaten up? I still keep them up to date, but it's not much work now. It's interesting to see the flatline get longer and longer.'_

_Helen turned her head at the sound of somebody at the door. 'That'll be Quinn.'_

_Sonny got up. 'I'll see whether she needs a hand.'_

_Sonny's sister was still in the doorway trying to round up three small children while encumbered with a baby in a sling. 'Hey, Sonny', she said. 'You're looking well.'_

'_What could be wrong with these kids' uncle?' he said._

'_Hi, Uncle Sonny!' the children shouted._

'_Hi, kids. Now remember, who's your favourite aunt?'_

'_Aunt Jane!'_

'_That's right!' Sonny said, grinning._

_The children's mother and their uncle joined forces to shepherd them into the kitchen to greet their grandparents. Then Quinn told them to go and watch something educational on the television. As they raced off she lowered herself and the baby into a chair._

_From the other room came the sound of the _Sick, Sad World _announcer: 'Breast implants for chickens …'_

_As one, Sonny and Quinn shouted, 'Not that!'_

'_So', Helen said, 'how are you, Quinn?'_

'_Apart from exhausted? You know, another day, another baby.'_

_They all laughed. Sonny leaned over Quinn's shoulder to bestow an avuncular kiss on the infant's forehead. 'Another beauty', he said. 'Of course, that's to be expected from you and Trent.'_

'_And how about you, Sonny?' said Jake. 'Anybody special in your life?'_

_Sonny walked round from behind Quinn's seat to take his own again, but stopped, halfway in his circle of the room, beside the table on which the family photographs were displayed. He looked at his parents and sister and then down at the photographs: the bridal photograph of Quinn and Trent; another wedding photograph, showing Quinn and Trent with Sonny and Jane; each of Quinn's children; a huge family group photograph. From there he looked round Jane's paintings of the family on the walls and then back at his parents and sister._

'_My life's full of special people', he said._

_Helen looked across at Quinn and reached out a hand to her shoulder. Then she looked back at Sonny. 'But you know what your father meant.'_

'_Mom! Dad!' said Quinn. 'Do you know how many different boys I dated, over how many years? Sonny's been a slow starter. Give him time. He'll find somebody, if that's what's right for him.'_

_Jake reached out to take Quinn's hand with one of his, and Sonny's with the other. Then Helen did the same. All four put their hands together and smiled at each other._

_Jake was the first to speak. 'It occurs to me how happy I am at the way you two kids have turned out.'_

_Sonny was sceptical. 'Come on.'_

'_Sonny, every week you write that column of yours, trying to wake people up to the truth. My son, the crusader. And Quinn, you've taken all that energy and enthusiasm you used to direct into, well, some things that were a teensy bit superficial …'_

_Quinn chuckled. 'I was a stuck-up little princess, wasn't I?'_

'… _and now it seems like it all goes into those kids, except that there's just as much left over for driving your husband's career.'_

_Sonny nodded. 'It still amazes me, every time I remember what Trent _used_ to be like.'_

_Quinn smiled. 'There was always more to him. Somebody just had to find it. I'll never stop being grateful to you and Jane for getting me started on looking—even if it was kind of inadvertent. _And_ for being so great with the kids. And, you know, everything.' She kissed the baby. 'You know, you'd think Trent's career would compete with the kids, but it's like the more he focusses on one, the more he focusses on the other.'_

_Jake said, 'You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to play a family card game with my beautiful wife and my two great kids.'_

_The rest of the family all voiced their surprise._

'_We never played a family card game in our lives', Sonny said._

'_I know what that's like', his father said. 'I remember asking _my _father to play Go Fish!' He slammed his fist on the table._

_Before he could work himself up any further, Quinn put her hand on his arm. 'Remember the triple bypass, Dad!'_

_Jake suddenly slowed down the way he'd taught himself to do since the operation gave him a new perspective. 'Okay, I'm all right. So, we never played a family card game. All the more reason to do it now! Not Go Fish—Crazy Eights?'_

_Quinn suggested rummy, Helen hearts, to which Quinn and Jake agreed._

_Sonny was still standing with one hand on the back of his chair. His eyes had lost focus. 'Ricketty Kate', he muttered._

'_You have to have a different name for it?' said Quinn, with a smile and a lift of her eyebrows._

'_It's the same game, though', said Helen, nodding._

'_Is my boy in then?' said Jake, shuffling the cards._

_Sonny nodded as he sat down and rejoined his family._

* * *

><p>'I think it might be more like a scene than a whole story', Sonny said as he walked to school with Jane. 'But that's not my main problem. If I need to add some more scenes to fill in the background it shouldn't be much of a problem, now that I know where the story would be going. All that's needed is to fill in, for an uninformed reader, the facts about the background that anybody who knows the real people would already have. Anybody who already knows the real people probably wouldn't have much trouble figuring out what I've done with them. And that's the real problem.'<p>

'Are you in the story?' said Jane.

Sonny nodded. 'A future version of me, like my mother suggested. Something that maybe I might hope for. She really nailed me there. Once she'd formulated the challenge I couldn't back away from it. But I'm not comfortable with that much hope. Anybody who reads the story might get the idea that I'm secretly a much more positive person than I seem. It could be very damaging.'

'And that's why you didn't want your Mom to read it?'

'I told her that I wasn't sure it was finished yet, which is kind of true, but it's not the real reason. But even if I can keep putting her off, I still have to hand in a story to O'Neill. Hoping for him to keep the contents secret is like hoping for the Leaning Tower of Pisa to be unaffected by an earthquake. I still haven't figured out what to do.'

Jane slowed her pace to match Sonny's defeated trudge, and her voice to match both. 'Am _I _in this story?'

'Not directly. You're mentioned.'

Jane noticed that Sonny wasn't looking at her. She held back her tongue completely as well as her feet partially for the next two minutes. Then without preamble, and without looking at Sonny, she said, 'Do you think … you know, some day … you might let me read it?'

Sonny didn't look at her either. 'I think it would probably have to be a long time from now.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Write Where It Hurts' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	27. ReEnvisioning

**Not So Different**

_**27. Re-Envisioning**_

Sonny was hating learning to drive. He had to focus his mind, and then double the focus, and then redouble it, and then keep it screwed to the sticking-point, and that just wasn't the way he was used to studying. It was like turning into Jodie Landon.

Never before had he spent this long on a voluntary attempt at something he wanted to be able to do, and still felt that he wasn't getting good at it. What made it worse was that it was his father who was trying to teach him, and if you were striving for maximum focus, Jake Morgendorffer was not the person you wanted sitting next to you.

'Sonny, watch out for the dog! Watch out, Sonny, watch out! Aaah!'

Sonny braked, hard. 'Oh no, did I kill it? I never even saw it! I killed a dog!'

'I don't know! What happened? Where is it? Weren't you looking? Pull over!'

With the car stopped, they were able to look round and see the dog running off unhurt. It looked more relaxed about the whole experience than they were. Much more.

Sonny started to calm down first. His father was still having palpitations.

'Dad, I didn't actually hit the dog at all. I mean, it was close, but the dog's fine.' Sonny turned his head to look in the direction in which the dog had gone. Dropping his voice, he said 'I don't know how I'd cope if I actually did hit a dog.'

'You don't know how you'd cope? I'm teaching you! I'm responsible!'

'Yes, and what a wonderful example you're setting for your son' said Sonny flatly. 'As always.'

'Uh … right! Listen … uh … maybe if you're a bit shaken up the best thing would be for me to drive us home! We can do more driving lessons another time.'

As they changed seats Sonny wondered whether he might do better trying to get some driving practice with somebody else instead. Who else did he know that could drive? Trent would be the opposite of his father, which wouldn't necessarily be an improvement. Also, although he might readily agree to assist, he might just as easily forget about any appointment—or 'leave it loose'. So that only left his mother.

_I suppose I could do worse_, he thought. _And isn't that the story of my life?_

As they drove home, Sonny's father hinted that there wasn't any need to let Sonny's mother know about the near-miss incident with the dog. Sonny was defocussed, not taking in every word, but with no effort he made the deduction that his Dad had insisted that it was a father's place to teach his son to drive and that his Mom had resisted. Now Jake was worried that if Helen found out she would feel her misgivings vindicated. 'Why didn't you notice that dog?' he fretted.

'I don't know. Maybe my glasses interfere a little with my peripheral vision.'

'I didn't know that! Why didn't you tell me that?'

Sonny remembered every word of _that_ exchange. He had reason to remember, and to regret, although the reason wasn't manifest to him until that evening when his mother came to his room to talk to him. His father may not have told her everything about what happened, but he must have given her some sort of clue about the possible peripheral vision problems resulting from Sonny's wearing of glasses, and she wanted to use the opportunity to renew her old suggestion that Sonny consider contact lenses.

'Mom, we've been through this before. It's not because I wear glasses that people bully me. I'd still get picked on even if I wore contact lenses. I've got the data to prove it and you know it. And you also know that I've got the data to prove that I'm getting picked on less frequently every year, and that's without giving up my glasses. Why should I change now?'

Sonny's mother sighed. 'Give me a little credit, Sonny. Nobody's going to take away your glasses. It's just that contact lenses are better for some things. Like driving and … uh … sport.'

Sonny's voice almost rose. 'Sport?' He stood up, spread his arms, and looked down at himself. 'Did I get a full body transplant when I wasn't looking? And why didn't I get eyes with corrected vision as part of the deal?'

His mother took a step back. 'Okay, not sport. But how do you make contact lenses into an ethical issue?'

'I shouldn't have to change something superficial like my appearance for people to judge me fairly.'

'But Sonny, your glasses change your appearance. Remember, I knew you before you had them. You weren't born wearing glasses. I was there. The original you is still there, but it's under the glasses now.'

Sonny felt his hand move reflexively towards the navel ring concealed under his clothes, and shifted the motion in a different direction as his mother continued.

'And if you're considering the ethical perspective, shouldn't you try to be the safest driver you can?'

'Mmm.' Sonny gave a single reflective nod. 'All right, I'll think about it.'

And when Sonny said he'd think about something, he meant it. His mother knew it too. She left him to it.

He began by checking in the bathroom mirror, taking off his glasses to study his reflection. There was a sense in which _that _was the real Sonny Morgendorffer. Had he actually been trying to _hide _that all these years? No, his parents had got him glasses in the first place. His resistance to contact lenses had only come later. So … so what?

Hard thinking didn't bring Sonny to a speedy conclusion. The next day he tried to talk it over with the speedy Jane Lane.

'I almost killed a dog yesterday', he began.

'Gonna work your way up to humans slowly?'

'During my driving lesson.' He paused. 'It was off to one side, where I think maybe my glasses interfere a little with my vision. If I'm going to be a driver, I want to be a safe one. Do you think I should wear contact lenses?'

'And get rid of your glasses? The glasses that arrive in front of you announcing to the world "If you don't like it you can go to hell", which is the whole Sonny Morgendorffer thing? That was one of the first things I ever noticed about you.'

'You were noticing the way I looked?'

'You're scared of girls noticing the way you look?' Jane started rummaging under her bed. 'You shouldn't have made friends with an artist then, should you? I notice the way everybody looks. I remember telling you I used that self-esteem class to find material for sketches. Ah, here it is!' She drew out an old sketchbook and flipped it open before handing it to Sonny. 'Here's the first sketch I ever did of you. See how I used the glasses? But I've drawn you often enough since, you should be used to being an artist's model by now.'

'So if I get contact lenses, I'll be providing a new subject for your artwork?'

'Don't kill yourself with altruism.' Jane cocked her head. 'I know your twisted logic. Are you afraid of girls getting interested in you, or afraid of looking as if you're trying to get girls interested in you?'

'Right. This is all about girls. And sport, too. Let's not forget about sport. And trying to make my parents happy, of course. Any other complete misconceptions about me you want to add to the list?' Sonny's words bored in without inflection at Jane. 'I could tell you that I'm going back to the plastic surgeon. Or do you want to imagine me making out? With anybody? Ever?'

'Can I stop short of your wedding night?' Jane shuddered her head briefly. 'Okay. Clear the slate, start again. Your glasses work for you. That doesn't mean contact lenses won't. Different medium, same artist.'

'I could work in both, I suppose. The contact lenses would be for driving, I could still keep the glasses.' Sonny noticed what Jane was eating. 'Pass the cookie dough.'

Their conversation didn't return to the earlier subject, but Sonny's mind returned to it later when he was leaving the house, as he said goodbye in passing to Trent. Trent had persuaded him to get the piercing in his navel. Sonny had had misgivings then about altering his appearance, and Trent had made a case against those misgivings. Of course, Trent wanted Sonny to get pierced so that they could get a two-for-one deal from the piercing parlour, so presumably, like Jane, he didn't actually care what Sonny looked like, but it seemed at the time as if he was making a good point. Sonny didn't ask Trent for fresh advice, but he started thinking as he noticed the piercing in Trent's eyebrow and he kept thinking as he walked home. Trent's idea had been—or so he said—that the navel ring was not something he was wearing to make an impression on people but something he was saving for himself, and for those people who had already formed their impressions of him—if he wanted to show it to them. Or something like that.

So, did that mean that Sonny-without-his-glasses was a real unadorned Sonny he was saving only for those people who had already formed an impression of the Sonny-with-glasses he had created as an artificial front for the world? That would fit with what Jane had said, even if it wasn't quite the same, and even with what his mother had said.

And if so, so what?

He still hadn't worked it out by the time he got home, but he didn't realise the full extent of his confusion until he found himself knocking on his sister's door. When she invited him in, he tried to pass off his presence and his subsequent request for her opinion as casual, but he couldn't get Quinn to fall for it.

'What? Is this a trick?' Quinn whirled from the mirrors she'd been looking at up to that moment and advanced on Sonny. 'What's the catch? Why don't you ask your friend Jane what she thinks?'

Sonny could feel himself flinching internally at the suspicion and near-hostility on Quinn's face. Suspecting him of playing a trick on her was fair enough, she had grounds for that, but her face said more. They'd never got on, their whole lives, but this? And the way Quinn said Jane's name? Was Quinn _jealous _of his friendship with Jane?

His face tensed. He had enough problems of his own, he couldn't do anything about Quinn's. But he'd come this far towards crawling to her, so …

'There's no catch. It's a straight question. I did talk with Jane, but I need an opinion from somebody more attuned to … matters of …', and then with an effort he squeezed out the last word, '… appearance.'

Quinn's face came back with even more bounce than he was used to seeing from her meticulously cultivated hair. He didn't know whether he'd done the right thing by appealing to her, but he'd done _something_ right by her. He'd have to decide later how he felt about that. He hadn't _intended _to make her glow. 'You really are asking my advice, aren't you?'

When Sonny realised how deep he'd got himself, he decided that the only thing for it was to push on to the end as fast as possible. He could feel his navel ring under his left hand, which had moved to press against it. Somehow that reassured him. Quinn still didn't know it was there.

'Quinn, please', he said, 'this is hard enough.' He became conscious that he was looking down and away from her, but even realising that fact he still couldn't look her in the eye. What was he doing here, talking with her? She was the last person in the world he'd have this sort of conversation with. And she was the last person he was having this conversation with. There simply wasn't anybody else to ask. 'I just want to know what you'd think if I got contact lenses. Would you think I was a hypocrite?'

'A hypocrite? Because of contact lenses?'

Sonny realised from Quinn's response that he'd jumped over too much of the explanation. The logic was clear to him, but Quinn hadn't spent the last twenty-four hours brooding over the issue from every angle, and wouldn't have had Sonny's analytical capabilities available for the job if she had.

'You know I never pay any attention to my appearance because I don't care what people think of it … or me. But if I did switch to contact lenses, I would be changing my appearance. And after all those times when I've said I wouldn't change who I am just because of what other people think … or what other people might do to me. You know.' Sonny realised something. 'I've always said that changing who you are, and especially how you look, because of what other people think, is what _you _do, not what _I _do. So, if I got contact lenses after all that, would _you _think I was a hypocrite?'

Quinn tilted her head and gave Sonny a happy but distantly appraising look. 'It's not hypocrisy to come to your senses at last.' She smiled fully and tilted her head the other way. 'This is like a fairytale. You're waking up from an enchanted sleep. Sit down and let me help you.'

Sonny perched on the edge of the bed. 'I don't actually need any help. I just wanted a simple opinion …'

Quinn seemed not to hear. 'First of all we have to think about choice of colour. But once you've started you can always add options. Maybe you'd prefer to start with clear lenses, which would draw less attention to begin with.'

Sonny half rose. 'Thanks, Quinn, really, but I think I can …'

'Once we see what your new face looks like, we can think about how to change your hair to frame it … from there we'd move to new clothes …'

Sonny bolted. Behind him he heard Quinn in pursuit, as if she'd half-snapped out of her strange trance, but still babbling about 'shoes', 'accessories', 'taking it slowly', until he slammed the door of his bedroom behind him and was able to concentrate on blocking out the sound of her voice. He sat on his bed thinking hard. Quinn wouldn't think he was a hypocrite if he got contact lenses, that was good … but what made him think Quinn's opinion mattered? He had always given her a hard time about her obsession with appearance, but if he did get contact lenses it would be for driving, not to turn into Quinn … he certainly wouldn't be taking her fashion advice, no matter what she thought …

Suddenly he felt something teasing at the edge of memory. It involved Quinn giving him fashion advice … and Jane sizing up his appearance … and Trent was in the picture that time too, somehow … that abortive trip to Alternapalooza! Quinn had advised him to let his top hang out because it would be more 'alternative'. He'd gone into a spin thinking that whether he took her advice or rejected it he'd be allowing it to influence him. He'd thought about seeing what Trent did and following his example. And then he'd realised that he'd always worn his top tucked in because he was more comfortable that way and there was no reason to change.

By the same kind of analysis, the reason he got glasses in the first place was to see better; any effect of contact lenses or of glasses on his appearance was irrelevant; if it turned out he could drive better with contact lenses, that made them the functionally appropriate choice. Also, there was no functional reason to change between contact lenses and glasses during the day. What other people did or didn't think about his motives or his appearance was irrelevant. With the exception, just possibly, of what Jane thought about his motives (not his appearance)—but he couldn't let that thought hold him hostage.

Relieved and exhausted, he went to bed.

Next morning, as soon as he came downstairs, he found his mother and told her that he wanted to talk about contact lenses.

'Sonny', his mother said, 'I want you to know that I've thought about your objections and I understand and respect them. You're an exceptional young man just the way you are and there'll be no more nagging about contact lenses from me or your father.'

_Wow_, Sonny thought. _Look at what I did to her. I've still got the touch. _Aloud, he said, 'I'll try them. You should set up the appointment for me. You talked me into it.'

'I did?'

'That reverse psychology of yours is killer.'

* * *

><p>As he waited at Jane's door, on his first full school day without glasses, Sonny rehearsed in his head the explanation he was going to give her, but the effort was largely wasted. When she opened to him, she was barely able to recognise through her just-awakened fog that he wasn't wearing glasses, and after he'd worked through his rehearsed explanation she asked him again where his glasses were. She really wasn't a morning person.<p>

By the time they'd got to school, Jane was awake enough to take in his story.

'The doctor explained to me all the things that might possibly go wrong as a result of wearing contact lenses, in incomprehensible polysyllables.'

'—which you carefully memorised and will now research in detail?'

'You know me too well. I asked him whether there's any chance my eyes _won't _fall out and he said that so long as I follow instructions and take proper care nothing should go wrong. So if anything does, it'll be the medical position that it's my fault.' Sonny paused for Jane's amused reaction and then continued, 'Now, are you ready to tell me I've sold out?'

'Did you screw any money out of your parents for doing it? Because I don't see how it counts as selling if you didn't have a buyer.'

'You're right', Sonny said. 'I missed my opportunity there. It's a lesson to me, not to get conceited about how I'm not losing my touch.'

'Now that we've dealt with your twisted moral scruples, I have to say that I like getting to know the look of you without glasses.'

'I was hoping that neither one of us would be shown up as a shallow person who only cares about appearances. That would bother me.'

An easy wave of Jane's hand and the airy tone of her voice showed what she thought about that concern. 'We've been over this before. I'm an artist, remember? And I call 'em like I see 'em. With the emphasis on "see". I'm seeing a different facet of you. It doesn't mean you've changed into a different person. So are you going to let me tell you that you look pretty cool without glasses?'

'I guess. But don't strain our friendship too hard. Anyway, I don't know whether it's going to last. I didn't like putting the lenses in at all. I've got some experience in handling pain, but I don't like inflicting that much of it on myself.'

Jane raised an eyebrow. 'Bad, huh?'

'Not from the point of view of a masochist.'

'Well, let me know how it's working out. Whatever decision you make I'll be happy with.'

Sonny shook his head. 'And you call yourself a friend', he said.

Sonny genuinely would have preferred it if his eyes _had _acclimatised themselves to wearing contacts as the day went on. Having gone so far, he wanted to make the trial a fair one, and at the beginning it had seemed as if the lenses might give him better vision than his glasses. But the discomfort persisted and gradually got worse.

There were almost some unexpected side benefits, though. In O'Neill's class, for example.

Having failed, following the usual script, to get an intelligent response from Kevin or Brittany, O'Neill, still following the script, had turned to Sonny for an answer—or tried to. But without Sonny's glasses as a guide, O'Neill thought he wasn't there!

If it seemed too good to be true, that was because it was. O'Neill picked up the seating plan he used as a crutch at moments like these, and then turned to Sonny's seat again.

'Oh!' he said. 'You are there, Sonny. But … what happened to your glasses?'

'What', said Sonny. 'My glasses', said Sonny. Moving his arm like a parody of a robot, he jerked his left hand up to his face. 'They aren't there', he said. 'Where can they be.'

'Oh!' said Mr O'Neill again. 'Now, let's not panic. I'm sure we can find them. Do you remember where you had them last?'

'Do you think it would be a good idea if I went to my locker to look for them?'

'Yes, you do that. I'll give you a permission note. And we'll have a look around the classroom in the meantime, just in case you dropped them or put them down or something.'

Sonny rose from his seat, making play of groping with his hands in front of him for O'Neill's benefit.

It worked. O'Neill paused in writing his note. 'Um … are you sure you'll be able to find your way okay?'

'I think it might be better if Jane came with me.'

'Yes, that sounds like a good idea.'

Jane rose from her seat and came over to take Sonny by the arm and guide him to the front, where O'Neill handed her the completed permission note before they left the room. Once the door had closed behind them, and as Sonny turned along the hallway, she said, 'What was all that about? And isn't your locker in the opposite direction?'

'Yes.'

'But I thought you told O'Neill …'

'Think back. I only told O'Neill two things.'

Jane tried to puzzle it out. 'You told him your glasses were missing …'

'No. I know exactly where my glasses are, and why, and you know why too, although I didn't feel it necessary to mention any of that to O'Neill. I told him that my glasses weren't on my face, which is true, isn't it?'

'I should be able to remember by now how good you are at this. But didn't you tell O'Neill you wanted to go to your locker to look for them?'

'No', said Sonny, 'I only asked him whether he thought that was a good idea. As we know, if he thinks something is a good idea …'

Jane had no trouble completing the thought this time. '… that doesn't mean it's a good idea. So what was the other thing you did tell him? I still haven't caught up.'

'That I thought it would be better if you came with me. By which I meant better for me, which it is.'

'No complaints _here_. It's not as if anything worthwhile was going on back there in the classroom. So where _are _we going?'

'The boys' bathroom.'

'Okay', said Jane, 'maybe now I might have some complaints.'

'My eyes keep tearing up. I want to check them in the mirror. You can wait outside. I might want your help afterwards. And here we are.' Sonny pushed open the bathroom door. 'See you in a minute.' He let the door close behind him and went over to the mirror. In the middle of a period he had the room to himself. He took a close look. He'd felt the lenses itching but he'd been waiting stoically for it to pass off. Now he saw how bloodshot his eyes were. His eyelids, too, were an inflamed red. There was nothing for it. The idea of getting contact lenses was to see if they could help his eyes, not put them out of commission. He'd have to take them out.

When he came out of the bathroom he could barely see Jane. Everything was a blur. He focussed on her as best he could and asked her to take a close look.

She stared into his eyes. 'Not good', she said.

'I know. I've had to take them out. I can't carry on like this. But I haven't got my glasses here.'

'Well, there's only two more periods. Can you hold out?'

'Guess I'll have to. But can you give me a hand getting home?'

'Hey', said Jane, 'do I call myself a friend?'

Sonny was grateful for his friend walking home. He wasn't completely helpless, but he might have blundered into a lot of things without her guidance: people passing, tree branches, cracks in the footpath.

He could still hear, though. A car's horn honked.

Sonny felt Jane stop in time with him. He could see the car across the road, and the driver, but couldn't make out enough details for identification. 'Who's that?' he asked Jane.

'It's Trent.'

Sonny turned his head and squinted hard, trying to make out Trent's features.

'Hey, Sonny. The new look suits you.' Then Trent's car pulled away again.

'Sonny?' Jane took his left arm again to steer him onward.

'What?' Sonny shook his head to clear it. He realised that he had his right hand resting against his navel again, and let it fall.

'I think I told you that first. The new look does suit you.'

'Too bad I can't stick with it, then. There's no way I can keep using contacts until I see the doctor again and find out whether there's a way to avoid this inflammation. So it's back to glasses, at least for the time being.'

'And how do you feel about that?'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'It's hard to say. I've got used to wearing glasses. They do stand for something about me.'

'I told you that.'

'You did. But I've been thinking about what they stand for.'

'I told you that too.'

'I know. But I think there's more to it', Sonny said. 'Without my glasses, I can hardly see a thing. But with them, I'm reminded that no matter how much people pick on me, for wearing glasses or anything else, I see things that other people can't.'

'You're not talking about eyesight any more, are you?'

'No.'

'Well, I don't blame you', Jane said. 'I like the way you see things.'

'The thing is, underneath the glasses, I'm still the same person, with the same ability to see. It's been interesting finding out about that other me.'

'For me too. Let me do a picture of him to memorialise the occasion. You may need glasses for other things but you don't need them to pose for an artist.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Through A Lens Darkly' by Glenn Eichler and 'Dye! Dye! My Darling' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	28. Something For Everybody

**Not So Different**

_**28. Something For Everybody**_

Sonny said, 'I just think people should volunteer for causes because they believe in them, not because it makes the school look good.'

'Absolutely', said Jane. 'Run down the list of causes you volunteered for again?'

'I protested that book burning last year.'

'You yelled at the TV screen.'

The school district was having its first annual 'Awareness Of Others Week', and Principal Li had made it clear that every student at Lawndale High was to volunteer for an activity to help 'make the world a better place'. (Jane's first suggestion had been rounding up all the psychotic school administrators and putting them out of their misery.) Li wanted them to give something back for their country. (Sonny's first suggestion had been renouncing his citizenship.) Li had made her usual poor job of concealing her own aspiration for recognition, but it made no difference. Recalcitrantly, dilatorily, but inexorably, Sonny and Jane were now approaching the point where they had to put their names down for something. They did find the sign-up sheets nearly full (as Sonny said, because of the full day of procrastination they'd put in), but near enough wasn't good enough. There was good news for Jane, though: they were looking for somebody to run an arts and crafts class at the children's hospital. She said it was too bad there was only one slot, but she obviously didn't feel bad enough to refrain from taking it. It didn't make any difference to Sonny; he reminded her that he'd told her not long after they first met that he knew he wasn't in her league artistically and wouldn't get out of his depth by trying to collaborate with her. He was resigned to highway clean-up.

Jane suggested that Sonny might read to senior citizens instead. Sonny was comfortable with his original choice.

'Come on', said Jane. 'You're a people person.'

Sonny was not convinced.

'Well', said Jane, 'you're a person, anyway.'

Sonny wasn't sure whether Jane was just enjoying some sort of twisted joke, but he figured that since he had no strong feelings at all, he might as well go along with what she was saying as anything. He put his name down for reading to seniors.

When he discovered at home that Quinn and the Fashion Club were going to be collecting clothes for the homeless, he wondered whether that might not have been a better choice. It probably would involve less prolonged public contact—maybe interacting with more people, but not with any of them closely or for long. Even were the option available, though, there would be no way he would want to do that with the Fashion Club, listening to them tell people that their clothes weren't good enough for the homeless, as Quinn told their mother when she offered to be the first donor.

Sonny found the spirit in which Jane approached her volunteer assignment less totally unappealing than Quinn's, even though he couldn't generate the same enthusiasm she did for teaching an arts and crafts class—or for anything, really. At least she was rejecting the 'popsicle-stick picture-frame' model of arts and crafts. Sonny remembered classes like that from summer camp. The kids at the hospital were lucky to be working with Jane's ideas instead. Even if they did involve auto parts, dismembered toys, and cattle bones, and making voodoo dolls of the hospital staff. If enthusiasm were contagious, he would have caught it from Jane. She tried to encourage him, pointing out that he liked reading.

Sonny looked away from Jane. 'I like sleeping, too, but the idea of an audience in my bedroom would creep me out.'

'You could try that old trick of picturing the audience in their underwear.'

'I hope you're not talking about people in their underwear watching me while I'm sleeping, because that would add a whole new dimension to the concept of "creeping me out".'

Jane added another piece of unidentifiable junk to her pile of 'craft supplies'. 'An audience of senior citizens in their underwear might make you throw up, but at least you won't be intimidated.'

Jane's eerie and unsettling enthusiasm flashed through Sonny's mind again for one moment when he finally approached the front door of the retirement home. He thrust the image from his mind as he knocked at the door. The nurse who admitted him told him that some of his classmates had preceded him. As if that wasn't bad enough already, they turned out to be Brittany Taylor and Kevin Thompson. Sonny would not previously have put money on either of them being able to read a book all the way to the end, never mind reading it to somebody else—especially not the quarterback.

He hadn't figured on Kevin's reading material being a comic book, although in hindsight he really should have. And apparently the seniors liked being read to from comic books, or at least they liked being read to by Kevin from comic books, although not as much as they liked being read to by Brittany from cheap romance novels. Meanwhile the nurse ushered Sonny into one of the bedrooms where he was introduced to a Mrs Patterson, who appeared to be bedridden.

'What a pretty girl …', Mrs Patterson said.

'Um, excuse me?' Sonny began. Taking him for 'pretty' would have to be put down either to failing eyesight or to incipient dementia (or both); 'girl', maybe the same, except that he'd known able-bodied people in the prime of life to make the same mistake.

But the conclusion of Mrs Patterson's sentence made it clear that it wasn't that kind of mistake.

'… that Brittany is.'

Sonny wasn't sure whether to feel relief or vexation, but he knew he didn't want to discuss Brittany Taylor with Mrs Patterson. Or with anybody. 'I wouldn't know', he said. 'She's dating Kevin.'

'Never mind …'

'I don't.'

At Sonny's rude interruption, Mrs Patterson gave him a cross look and her tone became brusque. 'I don't suppose you do. Well, what have you brought to read?'

Sonny's tone, as usual, did not change. 'Some poetry.'

'Oh, that's nice. Some of my favourite birthday cards have poems in them.'

Sonny doubted anybody had ever excerpted Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl'for a birthday card, but he settled into a chair, opened the book, and began to read. In retrospect the surprising part was that he got halfway through Part III before Mrs Patterson pushed the call button to summon the nurse.

'Mrs Patterson', the nurse said, 'can I get you anything?'

'Get me my walker—and then hit him with it!'

Threats of physical violence were of course nothing new to Sonny, but he'd never been threatened with a walking frame before. There's always something new to learn. He wondered whether Mrs Patterson's latest reaction was a sign of incipient dementia. In deference to the intended purpose of his visit, he did not give tongue to his thoughts.

The nurse suggested that the problem had been with his selection of material. Privately Sonny doubted this. In his experience the world was full of people who didn't like the sound of his voice, or just plain didn't like him, many of them showing no indicators of dementia. However, the nurse was keen to test her idea and offered him a different book to read from. Then she took him to the room of a Mr Gross, who was not only bedridden but also dependent on a respirator. Mr Gross was quite clear that he wanted Brittany to read to him. That eliminated the nurse's hypothesis about choice of reading matter: Sonny hadn't started reading yet. Mr Gross just didn't like Sonny and had lost any inhibitions about letting that show. When Sonny did start reading, it didn't help. Mr Gross still wanted Brittany. Sonny wasn't getting anything out of the experience either. The book the nurse had handed him was titled _Parables Of The Way_, but it was just a collection of Aesop's fables. Not that Aesop's fables weren't a great literary and cultural achievement: but Sonny already knew everything about them inside out, except for the infantile manner in which this edition retold them. They weren't doing anything for Mr Gross, either. He still wanted Brittany, calling out for her plaintively when the nurse announced that she was free.

Sonny shut the book. 'Excuse me, Mr Gross, I don't want to be rude, because I'm supposed to be here making the world a better place for you, but if you don't want me here reading to you … maybe, if we're both lucky, I can arrange something else that you do want.'

Mr Gross just looked at him, and then away again.

Sonny wasn't discouraged—not any more than he'd been to begin with. Mr Gross's reaction corroborated his thinking.

'Mr Gross, I can't guarantee to get Brittany to read for you, but I can give it a try. If I can't get Brittany, I still might be able to get Kevin. And if I can't get either of them, I can definitely give you something everybody wants: the chance to ignore me. You'd like to be able to ignore me, wouldn't you? That would make your world a better place. There's only one thing I need you to do for me in exchange. If the nurse or anybody comes in here looking for me, tell them I had to go to the bathroom and I'll be back shortly. Can you do that for me?'

Mr Gross looked back at him.

'If you can do that one thing', said Sonny, 'you need never see or hear me again. And there's a chance you'll get Brittany instead.'

Mr Gross nodded.

Sonny stood, set down _Parables Of The Way _on Mr Gross's visitor's chair, picked up his backpack, and went to find Kevin, who was reading another comic book to another lucky, lucky resident of the Better Days Retirement Home. Sonny's sense of appropriate behaviour, and perhaps also his instinct for self-preservation, held him back from interrupting, but even Kevin couldn't spin out the reading of a comic book for long. When he reached the end, Sonny said, 'Excuse me? You're doing such good work there, Kevin, I don't want to stop you, but there's a chance for you to do something else good. You're much better at this than I am.'

'Hey, not everybody can be popular, right?'

'Exactly, and when you think about it, isn't that a good thing? But what I wanted to tell you about was this poor sick patient here, Mr Gross, who's so bad that he has to be on a respirator all the time.'

Kevin's brow creased. 'Um … that's not good, right?'

'You always see the important things, don't you, Kevin? I guess that's why you're the QB.' Kevin preened and gave a goofy grin as Sonny continued. 'You're right, he's very sick, and he badly needs anything that might make him feel better. Of course I'm no good for that, as you know.'

'Yeah, I get that', said Kevin implausibly.

'It would be a really good thing if you could ask Brittany to read to him. I know that would cheer him up, because he said so. Or, if she's too busy, maybe you could do it yourself.'

'Sure! Leave it to the QB, man. I'll take care of it. Anything to help the sick guy, right?'

'Mr Gross', Sonny said. 'That's the name. I knew you were the man who'd do the right thing. They shouldn't send a boy like me to do a man's job.' With Kevin, it was impossible to lay it on too thick. 'You're a lesson and an inspiration to everybody.' _Of a sort_, Sonny added silently to himself. 'But I mustn't take up any more of your valuable time, must I, when there are people who need your help?' Sonny left at once so that Kevin's resources needn't be taxed finding another reply. He headed straight for a men's bathroom (open to visitors, not reserved for staff or patients) and shut himself into a cubicle. It wasn't the most attractive place to be, but he was soon absorbed in his own book, which made conditions tolerable, or at least more tolerable than the circumstances he'd been in before.

By comparison, when he next saw Jane and had the chance to talk to her about his experience, he found that she was finding her experience more than tolerable. Her enthusiasm had not abated but intensified. She had the children redoing the wall murals, changing the happy clowns holding balloons into Mongol invaders wielding maces.

'Wow', Sonny said. 'You really are making their world a better place.'

Jane asked him about reading to seniors at the retirement home.

'It's just like high school', he said. 'The good-looking and the inanely bubbly are favoured. But I'm applying the old ju-jutsu technique.'

Jane sat back on her heels and looked up from the pile of craft supplies she'd been assembling. 'Do tell.'

'Only Li wants me to be there, and only because it'll look good for her on paper. None of the people there want me to read to them. They don't want it, I don't want it. They all want Brittany and Kevin to read to them. So I set those two up to read to the neediest patients, and then I go off somewhere to be alone and read to myself.'

'You think that counts as giving something back?'

'Hey, I'm giving them something everybody wants. Just think, there's a whole world out there that has never had the special pleasure that comes from totally disregarding Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior, Esquire. I'm making sure that a few more people share that opportunity.'

Jane looked away for a minute and attended to her selection of art materials again. Then she turned back to him with an alert expression as if something had caught her attention. 'I'm sorry, did you just say something?'

'Funny girl. I thought I might be over-generalising slightly when I said that everybody wants to ignore me, but maybe not. If I was, I think it was to an excusable extent.'

'So you're sticking to your plan.'

'One variation. Tomorrow I'm going to see whether I can get upstairs to the roof. It might be more comfortable than shutting myself in a toilet cubicle.'

And so each day of Awareness Of Others Week oozed viscously away, like pus draining from a boil. Sonny finished reading two classic novels, a major poetry anthology, and a selection of short stories, none of which any of the senior citizens wanted to hear. Jane was banned from the children's ward for her Old West mural ('what sort of Old West scene would it be if it didn't include a scalping?'). Brittany and Kevin won acknowledgment as 'most outstanding volunteers'. The Fashion Club were unabashed to present as the fruit of their clothing drive one pair of go-go boots and a belly chain, serenely confident that they were vindicated by the rigour of their selection standards. And Ms Li received a special commendation for the school's 100% participation rate, but then you can't have everything.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'The Old And The Beautiful' by Rachelle Romberg<strong>_


	29. Not Any Attribute Of Those Involved

**Not So Different**

_**29. 'Not Concerned With Any Particular Attribute Of Those Who Are Involved'**_

— _Yo, Jane Lane speaking._

Hi Jane, it's Sonny. Are you busy?

— _Not particularly. Why, something on your mind?_

Do you know the Good Time Chinese restaurant?

— _Sure, I've been there a couple of times. Are you looking for a review?_

No, I was just wondering if you'd ever been out the back of the restaurant.

— _No, should I have been? Is there something worth seeing?_

I don't know. Would you consider a dimensional wormhole worth seeing?

— _A what kind of hole?_

It's a thing you can go through and come out in a completely different space, like another dimension. In this case, on Holiday Island, where the personified spirits of all the special days in the calendar live.

— _Sonny, are you all right?_

Never better. If that means anything. Are you going to let me tell you the rest of this?

— _Okay, so long as it's on the condition that I don't have to believe any of it._

I was walking home from your place, and I met two of these personified holiday spirits.

— _Wait a minute. I thought you said they had this special island of their own._

That's why I asked you about the restaurant. They'd come through the dimensional wormhole to Lawndale.

— _Why?_

That was pretty much my question, but I haven't got to that bit yet.

— _Sorry._

That's all right. Anyway, I didn't believe who they were to begin with. I just saw two freaks coming towards me. Now, when I see two freaks I don't know coming towards me my first thought tends to be that they're looking to pick on me. In fact, whenever I see anybody I don't know coming towards me my first thought tends to be that they're looking to pick on me, because it's pretty much the commonest reason. And then these two actually blocked my path, but of course I wasn't going to be intimidated …

— _Of course not. Did they look intimidating?_

They looked weird. I can't really tell you what they looked _like_, but they turned out to be the personified spirits of Valentine's Day, which means Cupid, and of St Patrick's Day, which means a leprechaun.

— _So they didn't look like Cupid and a leprechaun?_

Isn't Cupid usually supposed to be a small child? This guy had the bow and arrow and the cherubic looks and was dressed in not much more than a diaper, but he was full adult size—bigger than I am. And the leprechaun was maybe around half my size, which is still a lot bigger than I thought leprechauns were supposed to be.

— _Sounds like an idea for a painting. Go on with the story._

Like I said, to start with I didn't know who they were, or what they wanted, so the first thing I did was to tell them I'd sign their petition for an alternative-lifestyles parade. Then they got into their explanation.

— _Which of course you accepted._

Well, this is the bit where I wanted to know why they would have come to Lawndale, even supposing for the sake of argument they really were Cupid and the St Patrick's Day leprechaun. And their explanation was that they were looking for three other personified holidays from Holiday Island who'd also come to Lawndale: Christmas, Halloween, and Guy Fawkes.

— _Guy Fawkes?_

It's a British thing. Apparently they light bonfires and burn Guy Fawkes in effigy. I guess Holiday Island covers every country's calendar. It must be incredibly crowded, come to think of it. Unless it's a big island.

— _What about Christmas? Wouldn't the personified spirit of Christmas be Santa Claus?_

I don't know, I didn't meet him. Or her. It. Whatever. The point is that the two I did meet said these other three had left Holiday Island to come to Lawndale and they'd had to come after them to get them back. Now by this stage I'd decided that it didn't look as if they were about to start hitting me, but I still didn't understand why they'd come up to me, and I knew that for somebody like me it wasn't the best idea to be seen standing around in the street with two weirdos.

— _You mean, two other weirdos._

Thanks.

— _Well, that is what you meant, wasn't it?_

The point is, I wanted to find out what they were doing so I could get them to stop doing it and go away and leave me alone. So I asked them about it. I said, 'If you've come to Lawndale to get those other three back, why are you picking on me?' And then they told me that it was because I'm the smartest person in Lawndale and they needed my help.

— _Lucky you're not susceptible to flattery._

I told them that if they wanted me to help they'd have to give me more information. What was the reason Christmas and Halloween had left Holiday Island and why had they come to Lawndale?

— _And that British thingamajig._

Guy Fawkes, right. So Cupid and the leprechaun told me that the other three were trying to start a band.

— _A band?_

I knowthe story makes no sense. Just let me finish telling it.

— _All right._

I told them that apart from the fact of the whole idea about the band making no sense, it still didn't explain why this band had left Holiday Island and come to Lawndale. So they told me that the band was quite good but they needed a guitarist, and they were looking for one in Lawndale. That was all I needed. The solution was obvious. If this band were hoping to break into the big time they were sure to be disappointed in Lawndale. All Cupid and the leprechaun needed to do was find a guitarist for the band back on Holiday Island. Then instead of trying to hunt down Christmas, Halloween, and Guy Fawkes, they should send their new guitarist here to beg the other three to come back for a string of paying gigs which, of course, they'd have to make sure to line up in advance to avoid having the plan exposed as a deception. I told them that was the best plan I could come up with, and if they thought I was so smart they should trust my judgement, so they went off to give it a try. I figure with all those different holidays from every different country, there must be at least one whose personified spirit would be a decent guitarist. Maybe something Spanish, do you reckon?

— _Well, I've got one suggestion._

What?

— _April Fool._


	30. You're On Your Own With This One

**Not So Different**

_**30. You're On Your Own With This One**_

'I simply adore what you've done with the place', Sonny said to Jane, in a voice with his trademark absence of discernible emotion. 'I can't say the same about what everybody else is doing with the place. Is this what school dances are always like? I've never been to one before.'

'As if you had to tell me that. Yeah, this is pretty much what they're always like. Except for the Jane Lane original abstract expressionist décor.'

'Remember when Li said the security was going to be too tight for anybody to rig a bucket of pig's blood to the rafters?'

Jane gave a knowing half-grin. 'I remember how disappointed you said you were.'

'Well, this is much better, and you did it completely under the radar.'

'I only had to go two days without sleep.'

Sonny said, 'I have to admit, there are times when taking a chance on participating in something can be justified, if you can do it on your own terms.' He looked around the gym again. 'I wonder what the so-called headof your so-called dance committee is going to think when she sees it. Especially the bit where you show your image of the car crash.'

'This is my artistic expression. That's why I took on the job, remember? I don't need Quinn to like it.'

Sonny looked at her. 'No.'

'Uh-_huh_. _That's _why you're here. You want to watch her not liking it.' Jane shrugged. 'She's your sister, not mine.'

'It wasn't the only reason. I wanted to see the result of your expressing yourself on a larger scale than a mere canvas, just for its own sake.' Sonny made a gesture encompassing the gym. 'What's worrying me—and I'm sorry to have to tell you this—is that the emptyheads seem to be liking it, too.'

'You're a real glass half-full person, aren't you? Still, the part about turning out to support the arts impresses me.' Her tone turned mocking. 'I didn't figure you'd want to _dance_.' Sonny tried to read her but couldn't. He changed the subject back.

'Speaking of the dance, the head of the committee still isn't here. What sort of confidence does that show?'

'She didn't want to come at all. But she'll be here. O'Neill said he'd give her detention otherwise.'

'When did he grow a spine?'

Before Jane could respond, the PA came alive and the DJ extended an invitation to 'ladies' to 'take your man by the hand and climb aboard the rollercoaster to looove', following up with a growl that only one person Sonny knew could have produced.

'You made Upchuck the DJ?'

'I figured it was best to keep him out of circulation', said Jane. Sonny couldn't argue with that logic. Too bad it couldn't be permanent. 'Plus', Jane continued, 'he had all the right qualifications.'

'He's doing it for free?'

'And everything I could save meant more money for paint.'

'Your approach to allocating the budget doesn't seem to have spoiled anybody's fun.'

Jane shrugged and then gave a tilted nod of the head. 'Least of all mine.'

'A triumph for the dance committee', said Sonny with his usual absence of enthusiasm, just as Quinn entered. She had two dates, which could be expected to please her—unless she'd been hoping for three, as she sometimes managed, although her most frequent trio of admirers was noticeably absent.

Sonny had been spectating Quinn's performance for the past two weeks. Initially she'd nominally headed a dance committee made up of the other members of the Fashion Club. Sonny knew this because they'd come to the Morgendorffers' for a planning session. It had broken up very rapidly, though, Sandi leading a secession, and then Quinn had entered a rapidly descending spiral in her desperate search for a replacement committee. O'Neill had been willing to take on the role, but Quinn had had sufficient good sense to be appalled by that prospect; the boys whose maleness brought them helplessly into Quinn's orbit were repelled by that same maleness from assisting with dance organisation; and money extracted from the dance budget in desperation was insufficient to bribe Sonny himself. Jane, though, had wanted to get her hands on that budget, and the opportunity to work out some artistic demons on the walls of the school gym, and had been prepared to allow Quinn to offload all the work in exchange.

Sonny noticed that Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany weren't present. He deduced that Sandi had manoeuvred Quinn into taking responsibility for the school dance with the intention, all along, of sabotaging her. Now he might find out whether it had worked. Having sent her dates off on some errand, Quinn was coming over to Jane: she wanted an explanation. Jane had billed the dance as Lawndale High's 'Tribute to Jackson Pollock'; Sonny didn't expect Quinn to know who that was, but she couldn't mistake the image in the middle of Jane's artwork.

'Great! Some friend of yours bites it in a car crash and you take it out on me. My life is over, okay?'

Sonny congratulated Jane, but too soon. Quinn's two dates returned bringing punch for her and told her how much they liked the decorations and what a good painter she was.

Quinn's mood recovered immediately and she took her dates out on the dance floor.

'She's gonna take all the credit, isn't she?' said Jane, and Sonny concurred. They went up into the bleachers to sit down and watch her doing it while Jane finished her coffee. There were a fair few other people sitting in the bleachers in couples, so Sonny and Jane went all the way up to the top for some isolation. Sonny told Jane that he felt a little like an anthropologist observing an ancient traditional mating ritual.

'I was going to say an adolescent mating ritual, but look who else has turned up to participate in it', he went on, indicating to Jane a direction to look in with as inconspicuous a gesture as he could manage.

'Barch and O'Neill', said Jane. 'I did wonder what happened between those two that day at Jim's Paintballing Jungle.'

'Nothing good, obviously.'

Jane turned her head to give Sonny an appraising look. 'They seem to be getting on all right.'

'And when did we start caring about that? How does that count as something good happening between them from our point of view?'

Jane nodded. 'So you mean never seeing or hearing of Barch again would be something good.'

Sonny nodded back. The whole exchange had make him think more than ever of leaving. He'd come to see Jane's art, and he'd done that, and he hadn't any other reason to be at the dance. Still, if something stupid happened and he missed it, he'd regret it, the way he'd regretted missing the food fight at the so-called Medieval Fair. Also, leaving a function like this could be a danger time. All the hormones made certain types volatile, and it'd be worse if anybody had smuggled in any alcohol or other drugs, which was an odds-on proposition. He scanned the room for markers of potential future trouble.

'A lot of the football players don't seem to be here', he said to Jane.

'Sandi Griffin's throwing a party. That's probably where they are.'

_Sabotage? I picked that one, didn't I? _Sonny thought to himself. He continued scanning, until he noticed two boys he didn't know sitting in the back row in another part of the bleachers. They looked very much alike. Brothers? Twins? More importantly, were they looking at him and Jane? He did some quick calculations before drawing Jane's attention with a surreptitious gesture—he didn't want to attract even more notice from the strangers.

'See those two over there? I think there's a good chance they'll be heading over here in a minute to ask us to dance. They must be under the misapprehension that the chromosome pairs are in a favourable constellation. What do you think of them?'

Jane took a good look. 'No way to tell until we hear what they've got to say for themselves. Although I'd have to say that they are kind of cute. You couldn't deny that, could you?'

'That isn't the point. How cute are they going to think I am when they find out their mistake? Even if you can convince them that I'm not your boyfriend, there's no changing the fact that I'm a boy. It might be amusing to see their reaction when they find out their error, but there's no way you're going to get a chance to find out what they've got to say for themselves, let alone dance if you want to, as long as I'm around. Quite a few couples have already drifted out to the car park, so I'll go see whether there's anything entertainingly stupid happening out there, and that's where you can find me later if you've got nothing better to do. And if those two ask you what happened to your friend', he continued, to cover all possibilities, 'you can tell them that she has very strict parents and absolutely had to be home before her curfew.' He stood up to go.

'Hey, I'm not asking you to leave. It's cool that you came.'

'But you don't actively want to deter those two, do you? And there's no more effective social deterrent than the company of Sonny Morgendorffer. Look, they're already on their way over. It's no big deal. I came to see your art, I saw it, I like it a lot, I wanted to leave anyway, talk to me later.' With that, he headed off, just in time to avoid the two strangers.

At first he didn't find anything more stupid in the car park than some couples making out. He had to keep a cautious watch in every direction, but he also had to avoid seeming like a Peeping Tom, and the combined effort took concentration. Then, after only a few minutes, Quinn also emerged from the gym. He couldn't tell why: all he could see for sure was that neither of her dates was with her. Had she quarrelled with them? Had they quarrelled with each other? He was still speculating when Jamie, Jeffy, and Joey arrived and ran up to her. He edged nearer to eavesdrop. Quinn was asking why they weren't at Sandi's party (confirming that there'd been some competitive manoeuvring) and they were explaining that it 'sucked'. Why had they gone in the first place, then? Sandi must have promised more than she could deliver.

Suddenly Kevin's jeep announced its arrival. Presumably he'd just ditched Sandi's party too. Brittany had been at the dance with another football player: she and Kevin were in the middle of one of their periodic bust-ups. (Sonny and Jane had witnessed Kevin and Brittany saying that 'this time' it was 'really over'. Sonny hadn't wanted Jane to get her hopes up and had told her 'that species mates for life'. The interesting part from Sonny's point of view was that Brittany had succeeded in finding another date for the dance, while Kevin hadn't: all the cheerleaders had turned him down. Brittany might not be intelligent, but she had more basic survival-level mental function than Kevin.) Flicking through his memory files Sonny found an impression that Brittany and her date had also come out to the car park a little while ago. This could be interesting. He looked around, still trying not to be obvious, and spotted them at the same moment that Kevin did, in a car, making out. Sonny nodded in appreciation when Kevin charged immediately to the attack, like a stag in rut, dragging his target—Sonny thought his name might be Robert—away from Brittany and out of his car for a bracing bout of fisticuffs. Robert, or whatever his name was, seemed well equipped to give as good as he got. Presumably he played in one of those positions where sheer brute strength was more important than for a quarterback. More importantly, he evidently didn't have enough respect for his quarterback to pull his punches. Sonny had to give him points for that.

The fight was attracting a lot of attention, but Sonny was still keeping an alert watch all round. He saw that Quinn had drawn inspiration. 'Boy, those guys must really like Brittany a lot to fight over her', she said. It reminded Sonny of the party at Brittany's just after they'd come to Lawndale, where Jamie, Jeffy, and Joey had got into a fight over Quinn and beaten each other up. Maybe Jamie, Jeffy, and Joey remembered too: anyway, they didn't attack each other this time but instead ganged up on Quinn's two escorts, who had followed her out of the gym. Quinn reacted, in Sonny's estimation, with feigned dismay and secret delight. Then the car park seemed to be full of scuffles and Sonny's attention was concentrated on not getting caught up in any of them, accidentally or otherwise. He'd been caught in crossfire enough times in his life not to want it to happen again. He did manage to look around enough to catch a glimpse of probably-Robert pounding Kevin against a car. Sonny knew what it was like when Kevin was beating somebody, up close and personal, so it was interesting to observe the tables turned.

Robert-or-so must have outclassed Kevin by more than Sonny realised, or maybe he just scored a lucky hit. An ambulance had to be called, bringing the festivities to a close. Kevin's broken jaw was accepted by Brittany as an indisputable token of true love but obstructed discovery of Kevin's views on the situation.

As Kevin was being loaded into the ambulance, Sonny looked around again. With the fighting over, there was nothing else to see and he was just about to head home when he saw Jane coming out of the gym, unaccompanied. She scanned the area, their eyes met, and she came over to him just as the ambulance pulled away.

'What happened?' she said.

'I'll tell you about it on the way home—that is, if you're heading home. Or later, if you've made other plans.'

'No, let's go.'

As they started walking, Sonny asked Jane about the identical twins (he had decided that was what they must be just before he left the gym, when he got a better look at them as they approached).

'They seemed all right at first, until I found out what they were doing here.'

Sonny inclined his head, signalling her to continue.

'They're from Cumberland High.'

'I didn't think I'd seen them around Lawndale before.'

'They started off'—Jane changed what she'd been about to say—'actually they started off by telling me that they liked the decorations, so I was pretty much obliged to cut them some slack.'

'Come on, you know you thought they were cute.'

'Don't start with me, Morgendorffer. You know they were cute. Did you notice their hair was exactly the same shade as yours? Have you got a problem with my liking that colour? I wouldn't be much of an artist if I didn't notice colour. Anyway, they weren't just pretty faces. We had quite a pleasant chat for a while. They told me that they travel around on weekends looking for a high school more screwed up than Cumberland. You've got to admit that's a good line. You know, maybe we should try something like that one of these weekends.'

'So what went wrong?'

'I found out the real reason they were here. They'd come to see their cousin's performance as DJ.' Jane gave a droll frown. 'You know that growling noise of his that makes you want to … well, upchuck? Turns out it's genetic.'

'That's too bad.' Sonny really was sorry for her, and he thought she knew him well enough to recognise that.

'It wasn't a total loss. They told me about a place called Joe's Diner, and we definitely have to check it out some time.'

'Why?'

'The food's inedible and there's a schizophrenic on the waitstaff. Now what's the story with the ambulance?'

Sonny filled Jane in on the car park drama as they continued walking. When he'd finished, they decided to try to sum up the whole evening.

'Your art was a huge hit', Sonny began.

'Plus', said Jane.

'Quinn took all the credit.'

'Minus.'

'We got that lead on Joe's Diner …'

'Plus, but …'

'… from twin Ruttheimers', continued Sonny, for both of them.

'Minus.'

'I got to see what it's like when Kevin picks on somebody his own size.'

'Plus?'

Sonny nodded. 'But Brittany made up with him.'

Jane shrugged. 'Minus.'

They walked on in silence.

After a minute Jane raised a finger and added, 'Barch showed up.'

'Minus, but on the other hand, she didn't notice us and she did occupy O'Neill's attention and keep him out of circulation, so on balance I'd say we're more or less even.'

The first flakes of snow fell.

Jane said, 'Darn. Just when it was close to turning out semi-decent.'

They were passing the Griffins' back yard. Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany, dressed only in bikinis (they must have been in the hot tub), were banging on the sliding glass doors, demanding or begging (according to individual temperament) to be let in. In the room inside the junior Griffin monsters were visible watching television: presumably they'd locked their older sister and her friends out of the house.

Sonny and Jane looked at the chilled Fashion Club members, and then at each other. Jane raised her eyebrows and they spoke in unison.

'Plus!' said Jane.

'Plus', said Sonny.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Daria Dance Party' by Peggy Nicoll<strong>_


	31. Not Getting It

**Not So Different**

_**31. Not Getting It**_

Sonny was doing no harm to anybody, peaceably stacking some things in his locker while Jane waited for him, when O'Neill came charging up to him out of nowhere, hysterically excited, about what he would not say. But it had to be a bad sign. The more contact Sonny had with O'Neill, the more he wished he could voluntarily generate pheromones to repel buffoons.

O'Neill dragged Sonny to the faculty lounge to make a telephone call: a call to (O'Neill said) 'Val! You know, _the _Val. As in _Val_.' Then he spoke into the phone, giving Sonny grounds for a libel suit by introducing himself as 'Sonny Morgendorffer's writing mentor', before turning back to Sonny while he was on hold. 'Val is coming to Lawndale High to spend a whole day with you! Sonny, haven't you heard of Val?'

'I've heard of a few Vals, but I think they're all characters in comics.'

O'Neill disregarded this, following one of his main strategies for coping with life. 'I sent your essay "Getting Into Trouble" to _Val _magazine and it won their "Spend A Day With Val" contest!'

'_Val _the magazine? Ah … excuse me if I'm wrong, Mr O'Neill, but isn't _Val _a magazine for teen girls?' But somebody—apparently the eponymous Val—had come on the line and O'Neill, talking with her, was no longer paying even the shadow of attention to Sonny. Sonny thought quickly. Was Val expecting Sonny Morgendorffer to be a girl? There was nothing in the essay, as far as he could recall, to show otherwise. After all, 'Sonny' could be short for Alison, or Sonia, or Madison—and why would a male high-schooler send an essay to a teen girls' magazine contest? Val probably wasn't figuring on the involvement of a ninny like O'Neill. No problem for Sonny, it wasn't the first time he'd been mistaken for a girl, _he _could cope with it—and then O'Neill was putting him on the line. He shifted his voice out of its usual lifeless monotone to a slightly higher register, and put just a little colour into it, and he said as little as possible, which was easy, because Val, even the briefest telephone conversation revealed, was a self-obsessed monologist resembling O'Neill cranked up on methamphetamine.

Let her come all the way to Lawndale and then find out. That would be more entertaining. And if O'Neill hadn't noticed the problem, there was no need to tell him about it, was there? After all, it was Sonny's essay that had won the contest, not his chromosomes …

O'Neill was babbling something about 'secret' and 'incognito' and then, unable to contain his exultation, he embraced Sonny, shouting 'We won!'

_WE? _thought Sonny, but all he said was, 'Lawsuit.'

O'Neill's arms recoiled and he sprang back. Too bad he didn't go further. Three States would have been good.

* * *

><p>Sonny got hold of a copy of <em>Val <em>for background research. He shared the front cover with Jane: 'What TV's Hottest Hunks Really Think About Your Blackheads'; 'Val Talks To Today's Brightest Young Stars About Why They Love _Val_'. Jane changed the subject: wouldn't Sonny like a trip to the offices of _Val_—in New York City?

'But Val's coming here', said Sonny. 'I'm not going there.'

'Not yet, you're not.'

Before Jane could clarify her idea, the public address system summoned Sonny to the principal's office.

Just as O'Neill thought Val's visit was all about himself, Li thought it was all about herself (or about 'Lawndale High': but like a Louis XIV in miniature she never distinguished). She had summoned Sonny only to serve as an audience for her ideas to make Val's visit special. Sonny tried to pay as little attention as he could get away with, and to forget as much as he could manage, but he had to tell Jane something about it when he saw her again.

'She's planning a School Colours Day when Val comes.'

Jane said, 'We have school colours?'

'You've been here longer than I have.'

'I try not to know about things like that.'

'Good point.' Sonny's mind leaped ahead to School Colours Day. 'If you don't know what the school colours are, you might wear them by accident.'

Jane nodded. 'Good point.'

'Blue and yellow.'

'Thanks.'

'That's what friends are for.'

* * *

><p>The next stage in Sonny's ordeal by <em>Val<em>/Val was the reaction of his family to the impending visitation. His father cooked a recipe (chilli with cheese puffs) from the magazine (but just in case it wasn't bad enough he added his own special ingredient, a fresh sprig of mint). His mother set the table in the dining-room: they never ate in the dining-room. His sister dreamed of a special magazine photo spread on the Fashion Club and of Lawndale becoming an international style centre. The doorbell rang.

Sonny stood back as his family rushed the door. That was just the usual result of his deficiency in eagerness, but it worked out particularly well this time. Val started to gush almost before Sonny's mother had finished greeting her.

'Oh my God, it's perfect! It's so real. I am so jiggy with my idea of spending a day with a typical heartland teen. And you!' she said, embracing Quinn, who was naturally standing in front of Sonny, 'You must be my brilliant Sonny!'

Sonny was still thinking about the word 'jiggy', but he could see that Quinn had the grace to look a little uncomfortable. There was no point in her pretending, anyway, not with their parents present.

'Actually', Quinn began, trying to extricate herself, 'uh …' She stammered, obviously having difficulty finding appropriate words.

'Quinn's an exceptional person', Sonny said, in the same voice he'd used to Val on the phone, 'but what's she trying to say is …'

Val moved smoothly from one sibling to the other, as if no mistake had ever been made. 'So you're Sonny!' she said, embracing him instead. The contact was too close for the gender confusion to persist. Val dropped her embrace of Sonny even more quickly than O'Neill had dropped his.

Sonny's father put a hand on Sonny's shoulder. 'Yep, this is my boy!' he said, unaware of the problem. 'And brilliant's the word!'

Val regained her voice. 'I didn't realise that …'

Sonny stepped forward. 'Don't take it personally. You're not the first person to make the mistake.' He relaxed his control over his voice and allowed it to return to normal. 'My father Jake is Jacob Morgendorffer, Senior. I'm Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior, but everybody calls me Sonny. It's not short for Alison, or Sonia, or Madison, or anything like that.' He extended his arm for a formal handshake. 'It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I hope you're jiggy with that.'

Sonny's mother interposed. 'Val, it's so wonderful to have you here! We've all been looking forward to this so much! Why don't you come in and sit down? Dinner's all ready. I'm sure you've got so much to tell us. We're all looking forward to hearing about your plans for tomorrow.' Skilfully she steered everybody to the dining table, making sure that her husband closed the front door before he brought up the rear.

Val demonstrated her recovery at dinner, chattering freely, dropping the names of a string of celebrities—at least, Sonny assumed they were celebrities. She only mentioned their first names. Presumably that would be enough for readers of _Val _to recognise them. Sonny listened as little as he could manage, and cared less. Val didn't seem to notice, possibly because his family were providing her with sufficient reaction. Sonny wasn't sure whether his mother was genuinely enthusiastic or just putting on her best company manners. His father seemed to be keeping more track of what was going on than usual, and reacted when Val used the word 'edgy'.

'Edgy', he said. 'I keep hearing that word from my clients. Everyone wants "edgy". What is it?'

Val babbled a response in language which did not intimidate Jake enough to prevent him from admitting incomprehension—and in a professional marketing consultant, Sonny thought, that deserved credit. His mother interposed to ask Val about the food.

'It rocks!' Val said. 'Are these cheese puffs?'

Sonny's father wasn't letting go of his inquiry. It was unlike him not to be snowed. 'I got the recipe from your magazine. Is it edgy?'

'We only do edgy. That's what drew me to Sonny's essay, "Getting Into Trouble". I'm sure Sonny can tell you all about "edgy". Go on, Sonny, explain it to your dad.'

Sonny wondered whether he was being set some kind of test, but he didn't have a problem answering the question.

'As far as I can tell, "edgy" is supposed to suggest something dangerous and challenging, but only as perceived by people who are never going to do anything that seems remotely likely to endanger or challenge their own profit margins if they can possibly help it. Sticking to your own view of life even if it means a whole school ostracising you is challenging. Letting the biggest bullies in the school know exactly what you think of them even if it means you get beaten up is dangerous. But that doesn't seem to be the sort of edgy that gets into _Val_ magazine.'

Sadly, Val was unfazed. 'Is your brain sharp or what? That's edgy! Edgy is what defines _Val _and _Val _defines edgy!'

Sonny's mother said, 'Sonny's essay won your contest before you knew anything about him, didn't it?' She still seemed to be fawning on Val, but Sonny was starting to feel uneasy about her intentions. 'I guess some people might say it was edgy for a magazine for teenage girls to publish as a contest winner an essay by a teenage boy?'

'I am so down with that!' Val said. 'Let's give our readers the teenage boy perspective! That's edgy!'

'Hey', said Quinn, 'how would it be if you combined a perspective from a teenage boy with a perspective from a teenage girl? Like, two views for the price of one?'

'That's an interesting idea', Sonny said. After all, any time Val spent talking with anybody else was time she wouldn't be talking with him. 'Did you know that Lawndale High has its own Fashion Club? And the Vice-President is _my sister_', he added, knowing how much Quinn hated public recognition of the connection between them.

Sonny's mother was naïvely pleased at what she must have thought was a sign of fraternal affection, and at the idea of both her children being recognised in print by Val. After Val had left, Sonny's mother was still complimentary about her, which was frightening if it was genuine and equally frightening if she was trying to sway Sonny.

Quinn might want to get the Fashion Club into _Val_, but that didn't restrain her from saying behind Val's back that she thought she was a little old for her outfit.

Sonny said, 'She's a little old for that brain.'

'Try not to be too negative, Sonny', his mother said.

'I'm not being negative, I'm being edgy.'

His father was still plaintively inquiring the meaning of that word.

The next day Val arrived bright and early—or at least early—to take Sonny to school. She was, she said, 'like, beyond psyched. This is going to be too much fun. Are you just so jiggy with this?'

Sonny lied to her. He'd tried telling the truth to her at dinner the night before and it hadn't helped. Lying didn't either. She just believed him.

He also passed on without alteration Quinn's story that she'd gone to school separately because she wanted to consult with the other members of the Fashion Club. The more complete explanation that she avoided being seen with her brother as much as possible he retained in case it should prove more useful at a future juncture.

When they arrived at school, they were greeted by the sight of half the student body milling around in yellow and blue, and by a television news crew—the latter, thankfully, not in school colours. At least while Val was talking to the reporter she wasn't talking to Sonny. He ignored what they were saying, but he found himself struggling to remember why he was doing this at all. Surely he could think of some way of getting rid of Val if he put his mind to it? He didn't feel he was under any sort of obligation. He wasn't a reader of _Val_; he didn't like _Val_—or Val; he hadn't wanted to enter the contest; he hadn't even known about it. If he succeeded in sabotaging the whole 'Spend A Day With Val' concept, a lot of people could be pleasingly disappointed: maybe Val herself, maybe O'Neill, maybe Li—so why not?

He did feel that he owed it to himself to try to come up with something more subtle than a direct confrontation. If he turned on Val and said, 'I think your magazine is stupid, I think you're stupid, I never wanted to spend the day with you and I wish you'd just go away and leave me alone'—well, it would be honest, and it _might _work, but it just wasn't his _style_.

Val had finished talking with the television crew. She made a pretence to Sonny of feeling resentment about excessive publicity and loss of privacy. Sonny made a pretence of believing in her sincerity, confident that she would not detect his sarcasm when he said, 'That would be why you named your magazine after yourself.'

As they went inside, Val started talking about what their 'strategy' for the day should be. Sonny let his mind skip lightly over the torrent of gush. Apparently Val's idea was that she should write about her day at high school and Sonny should write about his day with her. One detail which caught Sonny's attention was that they should 'just hang'. Sonny caught himself starting to feel that a day with Val might be enough to make him want to 'just hang' himself, which didn't help him to frame a response when Val paused for one.

Just then, Jane walked past them, humming the tune of 'New York, New York'. Sonny still wasn't sure whether a trip to Manhattan would be sufficient compensation for a day with Val, but he contented himself for the time being with telling Val that he admired the idea that she should 'just hang', making the mental reservation to himself, _but I'm opposed to the death penalty_.

Meanwhile, Val had finally managed to drag her attention away from herself long enough to notice all the people wearing yellow and blue, and asked Sonny for an explanation.

'It's School Colours Day. Just a random event inspired by school spirit. It has nothing to do with your visit which, of course, is a huge secret.'

'You should have told me! I want to fit in while I'm here.'

'And that's the difference between us', Sonny said, but Val didn't seem to notice. She was on the phone to somebody to organise blue and yellow clothes for her.

While that was going on, Brittany and Kevin materialised. They hadn't quite grasped the principle of School Colours Day: instead of wearing blue and yellow, they had gone for the maximum of colour, to the point where Sonny wished for sunglasses. Brittany was making a show of friendship for Sonny in an obvious play for an introduction to Val which Kevin was characteristically, and dangerously, failing to understand.

Sonny said, 'Aren't you dating Kevin, Brittany?'

'Yeah, babe!' said Kevin.

'Anyway', Sonny said, 'we really have to be going. There are some things we need to talk about.'

Brittany wasn't giving up as easily as that. 'You and your new friend? Aren't you going to introduce us?'

It seemed the least trying way out of the situation, so Sonny said, 'This is Kevin Thompson of the Lawndale Lions. He's the QB! And this is his girlfriend, Brittany Taylor, who's our head cheerleader.'

'Hi!' said Brittany. 'Say, Sonny didn't mention _your _name.'

Val decided that now was the time to abandon even the pretence of concealing her identity, and confessed to Brittany that she was 'Val, as in _Val_'. Brittany responded with the fawning adulation Val plainly craved, and Val held out her pocket tape recorder and got Brittany to give a cheer for her readers. The three letters of Val's name, fortunately, exhausted Brittany's intellectual resources, and Sonny was able to get Val away on the excuse that he needed to get some books from his locker before class. Val was babbling something about the magazine, cheerleading, and yoga, but Sonny didn't bother taking it all in, being more concerned to relocate to a jock-free environment.

Much of the rest of the morning was a blur for Sonny, both at the time and afterwards, and given the quality of the bits he could remember, he wasn't sorry. That Val found high school classes boring he could have predicted, if he'd bothered to think about it, but he couldn't see that she deserved any compassion: she was the one who should have bothered to think about what it would be like before she committed herself to this insane idea of spending a day at high school when she didn't have to. The bigger problem was not that she found high school boring, but that her solution to her boredom was to rope as many people as possible into discussions about _Val _and/or Val (she, at least, didn't distinguish). At least there were people around who were interested in talking with her, which meant that Sonny didn't have to pay real attention, but she still perturbed the whole atmosphere.

The experience was interrupted when an unfortunate flunky arrived with Val's blue and yellow outfit, and she absented herself to change into it. _For this relief, much thanks_, thought Sonny, and he even dared to hope that Val would get lost and be delayed in finding him again, but no such luck. At least there was no shortage of teen girls around Lawndale happy to occupy Val's time with the teen girl perspectives that she couldn't get from Sonny.

In O'Neill's class, Val demonstrated a keen sense for weakness in a holder of official power, and took over completely, changing a discussion of multiple points of view in Faulkner's _The Sound And The Fury _into a discussion of her life, her magazine, and her advice on fashion, dating, and nail polish. Even O'Neill seemed to think she could help him (something that Sonny regarded as minimally rational only because it seemed unlikely anything else could). Good old reliable Jodie Landon came through with the socially responsible question that Sonny didn't have the energy to ask, about the brain-dead marketing-driven monocultural tunnel vision of _Val_, but (as Sonny took note) Val just praised her for her 'sassy energy' and then, as if somehow it were an answer to the question, changed the subject back to the difference between 'edgy' and 'icky'—'so hard to tell apart these days', Sonny said, just to show that Val was not the only one who could give non-answers.

Jane had a suggestion for Val: a high school student in New York researching 'edgy' and 'icky'. Val wrote it down. Sonny watched with mixed feelings: on the one hand, New York; on the other hand, Val …

Val, on the other hand, appeared to have unmixed feelings. When they came out of O'Neill's class, she was thinking that she'd done so well answering people's questions and giving them advice that she should have a television show doing the same thing.

'I know', Sonny said, 'you could call it _Val_.'

Val was thrilled, and got on the phone to her agent immediately, which meant Sonny didn't have to talk with her. As she discussed what the agent should say to the networks, Sonny could see Quinn and the rest of the Fashion Club approaching from behind Val, a situation which intrigued him with its possibilities: a clash of the midgets, in a spiritual way. Then Val hung up and gave him a rare experience: surprise. She asked him who he was. Apparently she'd forgotten.

That could be good.

'Who am I? Don't you know? Wait a minute, do you know me? Do I know you? Who are you?'

Quinn, arriving at that moment, interrupted. 'Don't pay any attention, Val. That's his idea of a joke.'

'Is it?' said Sonny, turning to Quinn. 'Do _we _know each other? Who are you?'

Their siblinghood was a topic Quinn preferred to avoid with her schoolmates, so she ignored him, and spoke to Val. 'These are my fellow Fashion Club members. We've dressed to show you the best of Lawndale chic. Note the simplicity, the bounciness, the overall cuteness.'

What Val noted was that the Fashion Club weren't wearing the school colours of yellow and blue.

Sandi, from the full height of her authority as Fashion Club President, formally obtained permission to explain.

'Mixing primaries during daylight hours? Not done.'

'It isn't?' said Val. She excused herself and ran off.

_I wish I'd known it was that easy_, Sonny thought. He almost winked at Sandi before he walked away.

But what she'd done didn't take. When Sonny and Jane were walking to the cafeteria for lunch, and just as Sonny was explaining his escape, Val rematerialised, like a conjured demon when they didn't have a protective pentagram.

Her movements were easily explained: she had secured another change of garments and was no longer mixing primaries during daylight hours. Now she was joining them for lunch in the cafeteria. She asked what Sonny and Jane thought about the way she kept changing her outfit.

Sonny said, 'Maybe it's just stupid.'

'No, it's fun', said Jane, 'like you, Val!'

As Jane and Sonny took their regular seats, Val asked why they weren't sitting at the popular table.

'The what table?' Sonny said.

'You know', said Val, 'the table where all the popular people sit.'

'The which people?'

Val sat down across from them. 'It's like you're not popular at all.'

Sonny turned to Jane. 'Do you know what she's talking about? Am I popular?'

'You're popular with me', Jane said. 'But am I popular?'

Val seemed to be getting … there wasn't any word for it, really, except 'edgy'.

'But you're … cool, right?' she said.

Jane started trying to sell Val on the idea that a trip to New York City—with Val, obviously to mentor him—could make Sonny much more cool. Sonny had spent a lot of the day trying not to pay too much attention to what people were saying and not to take too much of it in, but he hated the idea of having to treat Jane that way. Val, however, seemed taken with the idea of a story that combined Val's perspective on Sonny's teen life and Sonny's teen perspective on Val's life. Or something like that. Sonny really didn't want to think about it. But when Val said something about multiple points of view, he couldn't help saying (thinking of the book O'Neill had assigned), 'Just like _The Sound And The Fury_—especially the fury.'

'Exactly! It'll be Faulknerian and Shakespearean and mainly Valian. You'll hang out with me for one glorious day in your otherwise humdrum life!'

'I already feel as if we've hung out enough to last a lifetime—or maybe it feels like an actual lifetime', Sonny said.

Val was excited. She explained to Sonny that that was called 'soul bonding'.

Sonny turned to Jane and gave her the prison yard stare. 'On behalf of my soul—if I have one—thank you.'

Jane gave a raised-eyebrows lowered-eyelids smile. 'Nothing but the best for your soul.'

Ms Li's voice came over the public address system asking Sonny to report to her office—along with any guest he might 'happen' to have with him who was interested in joining them. Sonny's shoulders went down a fraction further—he made sure that it wasn't enough for Val to notice. Not that Val seemed likely to notice anything that wasn't related to herself.

In Li's office Sonny discovered a previously unknown aspect of the principal's character, a celebrity mania pathetic enough to extend even to quasi-celebrities like Val. He tuned out almost completely, until he heard his name being mentioned. Val wanted to check that Sonny was taking notes.

_Taking notes? Why would I want to take notes? Wasn't it bad enough to have to live through it without memorialising it?_

Li told him that it was an educational opportunity.

With that, Sonny could agree. 'I'm learning quite a bit.' He didn't mention that he was learning things he could have lived his whole life not knowing.

Just then Val's phone rang. Sonny was once again relieved that somebody else was taking away from him the burden of conversation with Val, but Val didn't sound relieved. Whatever she was being told, she wasn't jiggy with it. When she got off the phone, her mood levels were clearly in need of re-equilibration, a purpose she attempted by repeating the mantra: 'I am Val, as in _Val_. I am Val, as in _Val_.'

Sonny changed his mind and started to take notes. He got out a notebook and wrote: 'She is Val, as in Val. She is Val, as in Val.'

Li tried to restart the conversation where they—or rather, she—had left off, but after a moment Val excused herself to make a phone call of her own. For want of any more desirable audience, presumably, Li kept talking to Sonny, but even with verbal auditory attention dialled down, Sonny could still hear Val's _tone _plainly enough. He did pick up some of the words: 'she wants to have your baby?' and 'you ungrateful teen heartthrob cheeseball', and he could hear the exclamation marks. He tuned in again and made some more notes. 'Soon-to-be has-been' was an interesting phrase.

Li, on the other hand, was too disconcerted by Val's outburst to continue, and dismissed Sonny to find Val again, which he did in the faculty lounge. She was busily confabulating a version of the recent crisis in which she came out on top.

'So I said, "This is **Val **talking, not just some ordinary teen loser from Loserville." '

_I resemble that remark_, thought Sonny, as he made a note. He kept on writing as Val continued about her future dating plans and then, her storm of indignation blown out, returned to the subject of cosmetics. Then, seeing that Sonny was taking notes, she asked him to read them back.

'What am I doing here? How am I going to get through this? Oh Lord, if there is a Lord, save my soul, if I have a soul.'

Val, not recognising Renan, thought Sonny was being 'existential', but didn't understand (naturally) why Sonny's notes did not contain her words. Before he could say anything her phone rang again, but before responding to her caller she asked him to hang on. It was almost as if she were starting to take an interest in him.

The phone call, though brief, still fell into two parts: one in which Val complained about the television networks' failure to recognise her qualities, and one in which Val arranged for the sucker at the other end of the line to continue arranging her work and her whole life for her. Then she hung up and turned back to Sonny and complained about being exhausted by the work of collaboration before apologising to him for the telephone interruptions.

'Oh, I think of it as being a witness to history', Sonny said. Then he commiserated with her about being dumped. Val insisted that she hadn't been dumped, and rapidly changed the subject back to the failure of network television, and of the whole adult world, to appreciate youth culture.

Sonny, appreciating the irony, said, 'Except for the adults making a nice fat living from it.'

Something strange happened. Val stopped talking and looked directly at him. It was as if she was finally paying attention to him. Sonny wasn't sure this was a good thing but he resolved to take advantage of the opportunity.

'What do you mean?' Val said.

'What do _you _mean? Do you think the best thing you can do for teens is encourage them to be obsessed with your shallow values? Do you think what they need for their self-image is being told that the only things worth worrying about are appearance, fashion, popularity, and celebrity?'

'Who do you think you are? I've been a teenage girl, which is something you never have. And I'm still in touch with the teen within.'

'Why don't you get in touch with the thirty-something without? If you really want to do something for teenagers, why don't you give them some help with growing up, instead of trying to avoid doing it yourself?'

Sonny had finally lucked into punching one of Val's buttons. What really set her off was not being told that she was shallow, not being told that she was exploiting young people, not any implication that she was a totally self-absorbed egomaniac doing the work of the devil, but being told that she was …

'Thirty-something! Listen, when I read your essay I thought that it was smart, and that smart is cool. But smart that doesn't get cool isn't so smart, is it? You can forget about that trip to New York, Mr Morgendorffer. I should never have expected a cool perspective from an eleventh-grade boy.'

The obvious thing for Sonny to do was hit the button again.

'Cool or not, from an eleventh-grade perspective you might do better to flaunt your age instead of lying about it. A lot of high-school boys find thirty-something women', and here Sonny paused but was careful to keep his intonation level, 'intriguing. But maybe that's something else that's too edgy to talk about in your magazine.'

Val's voice, on the other hand, rose in pitch. 'You don't know what thirty-something looks like and you don't know anything about being a teen, girl or boy! You're unenthusiastic, you're unpopular, you're cynical—you may just be the _anti_-teen! _That's _what I'm going to tell the readers of _Val_!' She was already moving to the door as she spoke and with the last word she was gone.

Sonny was jiggy with it.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'The Lost Girls' by Neena Beber<strong>_


	32. It Doesn't Get Any Better

**Not So Different**

_**32. It Doesn't Get Any Better**_

Jane's result on the career aptitude test was the same one she always got: accountant. Filling in the letter 'C' for every answer got the test over within five minutes.

'Does that mean you didn't read the questions?' Sonny said.

'Questions? What questions?'

Sonny wished she'd told him earlier. He really needed to study her minimum-effort strategies more carefully. When he actually stopped to ask himself, he couldn't figure out why he'd bothered trying to answer conscientiously. All he'd done was invite insult: specifically, the insult that his lack of interest in personal interaction ideally suited him to be an embalmer.

He _was _interested in personal interaction … except for the part about his personally interacting with other actual persons …

… particularly when persons were like Kevin Thompson, who didn't understand what his test result meant until it was explained to him that 'petroleum dispensation' meant he was ideally qualified for pumping petrol at a filling station for the rest of his life.

Jane had been mocking the test results a moment earlier, but now she said sometimes they could be uncanny.

'Yes', said Sonny, 'it's uncanny how much they've overestimated Kevin's abilities. I'd suspect him of cheating but he wouldn't know how. If the test were accurate it would have picked up his suitability for work as a bollard.'

As far as Sonny was concerned, that should have been the end of it. And it would have been, too, if not for his younger sister's compulsive chattiness. She wanted the whole family to know what the career aptitude test had said about her: that she was ideally suited to be a neck model for jewellery catalogues, which Sonny regarded as reasonable insofar as it placed no value on Quinn's head. The bad part was that once Quinn broached the subject their mother began asking how Sonny had done in the career aptitude test. He did not admit any knowledge, even when she pointed out that she could get his results direct from the school, but she checkmated him by saying, 'Or maybe I'll just drop by in person, bring you a surprise snack for your lunchbox, pop into class, and give it to you myself.'

Sonny made a note to himself to continue learning from his mother as he surrendered the incriminating document. She was just as insulted by the idea of Sonny as an embalmer as he had been, which almost made him think he should reconsider it. The unfair part was that she blamed the result on him, and specifically on his lack of ambition.

'I'm sure there are opportunities for the ambitious in the funeral industry', Sonny said. 'Maybe I could start up my own business on the side, illicitly removing internal organs and supplying them to pet-food manufacturers.' Another thought struck him. 'Or cannibals.' He paused. 'Would your firm defend me if I were caught?'

His mother was saved from having to find a response by her husband's entry and by Quinn's request (now that the easy mark was in the room) for money to put together a portfolio of pictures of her neck. Helen insisted that if Quinn wanted five hundred dollars she could earn it.

'And if Quinn's getting a job, Sonny, you can get one, too. I want you to get an idea of what the working world is about so you can take an interest in your future.'

'Does that mean your firm does avoid criminal defence work? Or are they just squeamish about corpse abuse cases?'

'It says on this form that they have peer counselling at your school. Either you get a job, or you get some counselling to improve your people skills.'

* * *

><p>'I thought the counselling would be the less time-consuming choice', Sonny said to Jane. 'Until I found out who the counsellor was. It was some kind of cosmic payback for being too ironic.'<p>

Jane nodded for him to continue.

'Tiffany.' Sonny gave a minimalist wince.

'Fashion Club Tiffany? She was your counsellor?'

'She had a prepared script, and she was reading from it at about ten words a minute. I kept trying to guess the last words to finish her sentences, but that just made her lose her place and go back to find it. That was yesterday, and for all I know she's still there reading that script to me. She was in some sort of trance, I think, and probably didn't notice when I left.'

'So now you have to find a job.'

'My mother didn't say I had to find a job. She said I had to look for a job.'

Jane looked around the mall. About two out of every three shops had 'Help Wanted' signs out. 'Well, I don't suppose you can see any available here.'

'Exactly. No sense pushing our luck. Cheese fries?'

'Sounds good.'

* * *

><p>Sonny's mother was unimpressed with his report of his unsuccessful job hunt, and even less so—by the comparison that was a recurring bane of Sonny's life—when Quinn entered to announce that she'd found a job the first place she looked. When she mentioned that it was a pet shop, Sonny suggested that maybe they were just trying to find a good home for her (anything with both him and her in it, he reasoned, shouldn't count as a good home). But Quinn had no time for that sort of comment. She had just one night to coordinate and accessorise for her new position!<p>

When Sonny's mother renewed her angry questioning of his commitment to finding work, Sonny told her that he would place no limit on his search: weeks, months, years … He was unwillingly rescued from his mother's burgeoning vexation when his father arrived and announced that he'd found Sonny a job.

Jake Morgendorffer had a consulting contract with the national office of a chain of outlets trading under the appalling name of 'It's A Nutty, Nutty, Nutty World', and had been able to arrange, through the regional manager, to get Sonny a trial at the one in the mall. The man in charge there made it clear to Sonny that he shouldn't expect special treatment, explaining that he didn't like nepotism and cronyism and describing being forced to take Sonny on as 'not an ideal situation'.

'That's funny', said Sonny. 'I'm in Heaven.'

The manager explained that he only wanted to employ (in Sonny's mental paraphrase) nut-centric obsessives, and alleged that he secured them through a 'rigorous screening process'. Then Sonny got to see this in action when Kevin came in to apply for a job. Sonny presumed he was looking for a better career opportunity than working at a filling station and characteristically making a spectacularly bad job of it. His screening consisted of the probing interrogatory 'Can you bag nuts?'; when he gave an affirmative answer, the boss unwisely took him at his word.

After hiring came induction. Kevin and Sonny both donned compulsory ludicrous chipmunk headgear, and then the manager explained that every customer must be greeted with the slogan: 'Welcome to "It's A Nutty, Nutty, Nutty World". We're just nuts about nuts. Crunch nuts with your lunch. Buy them by the bunch. Send them to friends far away to munch.' He didn't explain _why _the company thought that potential customers would find signs of incipient mania encouraging, but Sonny automatically committed the slogan to memory and recited it in response.

On his second attempt, Kevin managed to get two words in a row correct and his third attempt confirmed that was his limit. He assured the manager he'd get it right for the customers.

Sonny thought about having to work alongside Kevin.

He said, 'He won't.'

Kevin rounded on him. 'Hey, I don't remember anybody asking you, Mister Smartypants!'

'No fighting!' the manager said. 'We have to work together as a team, a cheerful, smiling team. Remember our guarantee: "If we don't smile, the nuts are free!" And those free nuts come out of your pay. So show me your smiles: big ones, let's see them.'

Kevin smiled the smile of a triumphant idiot.

'I can't', Sonny lied. 'Medical reasons. I can't smile without discussing it with my doctor. Old facial injuries.'

'Come on', the manager said. 'Everybody can smile. You have to smile, or the nuts are free!'

'What does the brain say to that?' said Kevin, 'huh?'

'I've got records of hospital visits', Sonny said, now with strict technical accuracy. 'I could bring them in and show them to you. I'm sure "It's A Nutty, Nutty, Nutty World" wouldn't want to violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. You know my mom's a lawyer with Vitale, Davis, Horowitz, Riordan, Schrecter, Schrecter, and Schrecter? But I think there's a solution that will work for all of us. We work as a team, right? So Kevin can do the part I can't do, fulfilling the guarantee by smiling as he hands the nuts to the customers, and I'll do the parts Kevin can't do.'

'Hey, I can do this myself', Kevin said.

Sonny steeled himself. 'Remember, Kevin, we're a team. The same player can't be pass thrower and pass receiver. The same player can't be holder and kicker. Each of us plays to our own strength.'

Kevin's brow creased for a moment. 'Say, how did a brain like you get to know so much about football?'

Sonny turned back to the manager. 'This is just a temporary thing. Until I can tell you whether there's some medically safe way I can smile, and until we see whether Kevin can learn the words. Just as a trial for today?'

The manager looked from Sonny to Kevin and back and then gave provisional assent. He finished explaining what they needed to know—what Sonny needed to understand and Kevin never would—and took them out to the front counter, where he told them to do some business before he left to go manage somewhere else.

Sonny reminded Kevin that they were a team and that he, Sonny, would be calling the plays for the team.

'Hey, man, I'm the QB! I call the plays!'

Sonny persevered. 'At football. But this isn't football. Can you see any ball? any gridiron? any goalposts?'

'Um … no?'

'So this is a different game. Why don't you let me call the first play, and then we can see how we go?'

'So … what are the signals?'

Sonny continued to repress his reactions, with hard-won lifelong skill. 'When the customers come, I'll talk with them, and when I'm ready to hand-off to you, I'll let you know how to carry the ….' Sonny checked himself on the verge of discombobulating Kevin with a metaphor. 'I mean, carry the nuts. And the smile.'

Even as he spoke, their first customer approached. Sonny grimaced for one bare instant and then began to recite, as quasi-antiphons, 'Welcome to "It's A Nutty, Nutty, Nutty World". We're just nuts about nuts. Crunch nuts …', but before he could get any further, the customer interrupted to ask for a bag of pistachios. Sonny bagged the desired articles, and then passed the bag to Kevin, saying, 'Now, you hand the nuts to the man while you give him a big smile.' As Kevin did so, Sonny operated the cash register and collected the money. As he shut the register, and the customer walked away, Kevin said, 'Wow! We did it! We sold a bag of nuts!'

'See how good the teamwork is?'

'Okay, now next time I'll call the play. Oh wait! My apron's caught in the cash register! Can you get it out?'

As Sonny released the halfwit, he said, 'Why don't I call one more play at least, just to make sure we know what we're doing that way? And this time we can try to make sure that your apron doesn't get caught in the register.'

Another customer came up and exhibited the same intelligent desire not to hear Sonny's whole prepared speech before making her request, for almonds this time. Sonny bagged them and repeated his deployment of his auto-smiling conveyor belt, as he now found himself thinking privately of Kevin, except this time Sonny kept Kevin's apron out of the register.

By the third customer, Kevin seemed acclimatised to Sonny's routine.

'Wow! Three sales! I guess brains like you might be good for something after all. Of course, you can't have the team without the QB.'

'All we have to do', said Sonny, 'is keep up this perfect teamwork. You supply the smiles for the customers, and I'll supply the basic command of literacy.' Sonny was starting to feel he might survive the shift, when he saw Brittany approaching. 'This one's for you', he said to Kevin.

Brittany was aggrieved. One of her cheerleader friends had seen Kevin smiling as he handed a female customer a bag of nuts. 'You know women can't resist your smiles!'

Sonny decided to intervene. A spat between Brittany and Kevin might be amusing, but with Kevin as his co-worker—and in such a small space—he was too close for safety.

'It's part of his job, Brittany. We have to smile when we give customers nuts. There's a money-back guarantee. And Kevin has to do all the smiling, because I can't.'

Kevin nodded and grinned wider than ever. 'That's right! You know, he's a brain. He couldn't do the job properly without me.'

Again with strict technical accuracy, Sonny said, 'My face was injured a long time ago.'

'Oh!' said Brittany. 'That's so sad! Is that what makes you the way you are? Okay, Kevvy, if you're only smiling because you have to for the job, I guess that's all right.'

'Sure, babe, I promise.'

During this byplay, another customer had reached the counter, and now asked for four pounds of walnuts.

Brittany interrupted to explain that Kevin was only smiling for the job, not because he wanted to. The customer was bemused.

_Oh well_, thought Sonny. _If the customer's already bemused …_ 'Welcome', he began, 'to "It's A Nutty, Nutty, Nutty World". We're just nuts about nuts …'

By the end of the shift, without Kevin's ever actually admitting his cluelessness, he had accepted his role as the auto-smiling conveyor belt. In his mind, obviously, that had become the important part of the job, and Sonny's role was just the dogsbody. Other things were troubling Sonny more than that. He'd sold this arrangement to the manager as a one-day trial. What if the manager called his bluff about smiling? The whole story might get back to his parents, and that couldn't be good. He could come back next day and say that he'd talked with his doctor and there was a way he could smile safely, but apart from hating the idea intrinsically, it would also undoubtedly result in Kevin's insisting on showing that he could do Sonny's part of the job, and then Sonny would have to stand there listening to Kevin telling the customers, 'Crunch bunch nuts … um … munch lunch'.

Inspiration came to him when one of their customers mentioned that a canary had got caught in the mall's air filtration system. _A canary? Must have come from the pet shop—the pet shop where Quinn's working … ohhh …_

As soon as his shift finished Sonny hurried to the pet shop to intercept Quinn as she came out.

'What's this about a canary getting caught in the air filtration system?' he said without preamble.

'What canary? Besides, it wasn't really my fault. And can we not talk about this here?' Quinn looked round nervously.

Sonny looked through the pet shop window. 'So you're really enjoying working with the canaries in there, are you? And the other animals?' He took another quick peek. 'Like the iguanas … and is that a boa constrictor? I bet they're all really impressed by your animal print nail polish.'

'God', said Quinn, 'why do you always have to be like this? And can we not hang around here, please?'

'I tell you what', said Sonny. 'Let's start out for home, and I'll tell you about an idea I had that I think you might like better than working in a pet shop.'

'You just want to humiliate me in public, don't you?'

'No, I really do have a good idea … can we talk about it at home? I really think you'll like it. And I'll promise to keep clear of you in public.' Sonny was careful not to say anything about how long the promise would bind.

Quinn pursed her lips and looked sideways at him. 'Okay … but no tricks, I'll be watching out for them.' Then she hurried away from him.

Once they had both made their separate ways back home, Sonny laid his plans before Quinn. 'I guess you were hoping to work with the cuter sort of animals? Because in that case what I have in mind should suit you perfectly.'

'You're not doing me a favour, are you? So there's something in this for you, isn't there? if it's not just a trick.'

'Okay, what I'm suggesting is that we swap jobs. I'll take over your job at the pet shop, and you can take over my job at the nut stand. It'll suit you much better than it suits me, because it needs somebody who can smile, which you do so well', _at least, _Sonny thought to himself,_ according to common perceptions_, 'and you'd get to be close to Kevin.' _I guess he might count as an example of the cuter sort of animals._

'I knew it was some sort of prank! You know I can't work at a nut stand! You haven't forgotten that I'm allergic to pistachio dye! Well, I haven't forgotten, either. It brings me out in a rash. So you can just give up on your little scheme to ruin my career as a neck model.'

Sonny paid no attention to Quinn's departure. He _had _forgotten that Quinn was allergic to pistachio dye. But it gave him another idea.

He launched his new plan over the dinner table.

'Dad, you're consulting for the national office of "It's A Nutty, Nutty, Nutty World", isn't that right?'

'Sure, Sonny! That's how I got you that job. Say, how's that working out?'

'Well, they're still dyeing their pistachios, did you know that? I thought you might suggest to them that the natural look could be more popular nowadays. I've looked into it a little, and apparently they started dyeing pistachios to hide blemishes caused by hand-picking, but now that they're mostly machine-picked it isn't needed any more. And you know some people are allergic to pistachio dye, like Quinn. Remember when she got that rash?'

Quinn gave Sonny a suspicious look, trying to figure out what he was up to now, but Sonny was stalking bigger game.

'That's very thoughtful of you, Sonny', his father said. 'It's good to see you looking out for your kid sister! You wouldn't want that rash to come back, would you, Quinn?'

'That could ruin my career as a neck model! You don't have any of that dye on you now, do you?'

_Perfect_, thought Sonny. 'Well, I have tried to wash up, but I might have got traces on my clothes without noticing. It is a worry. And do you remember when I had that rash and the doctors couldn't figure out exactly what caused it? Maybe Quinn's allergy is genetic and I'll develop it too. I think, as long as they're using that pistachio dye, that job isn't the best idea for me.' Sonny looked at his father, who seemed convinced, then at his sister, who seemed to be relaxing her guard … and then at his mother.

'I don't know, Sonny …', she began, but then Jake interrupted.

'By the way, what's for dinner?' He took a long sniff. 'Peanut butter sandwiches?'

'That's Sonny', Quinn said. 'He smells like peanuts from that stupid job.'

_Do I?_ thought Sonny. _That's the clincher. _'That explains those squirrels at the bus stop', he said. 'Who knows what other allergens I might be picking up?'

Quinn drew back defensively from Sonny. 'You keep away from me while you're carrying those aller-things around with you! Mom, you have to do something!'

Their mother gave Sonny an appraising look. 'You've done a lot of research into this, haven't you? If you think it's so important, why don't you write a paper summarising your research and your father can use it as part of his consulting report?'

'Hey', said Jake, 'what a great idea! That'll look good on your résumé! We can call it "Internship, Morgendorffer Consulting"!'

Sonny held still for it. 'I guess if I take on that job, I won't be able to keep on the one at the nut stand—not that I think I should, anyway, because of the allergies …'

And this, willingly or not, his mother accepted. Sonny found the exchange less than ideal, but good enough. He had done three-fifths of the research for the paper already. He retired from the dinner-table conversation reasonably satisfied, leaving his mother to ask Quinn about _her _job, Quinn to give positive responses (she didn't mention canaries), and Jake to ask for the peanut butter sandwiches again.

In fact, when Sonny applied himself, he found that he could finish the paper in one day. He did half of it at school, in classes where the teachers weren't saying anything he needed to pay attention to. As it turned out, his 'internship' with Morgendorffer Consulting only ended up lasting that one day. At dinner he learned that Quinn had lost her job at the pet shop over some animal escapes—not just the canary, apparently, but Quinn said she was too traumatised to talk about it. Their mother simply reaffirmed that Quinn would need to find another job if she wanted to get five hundred dollars for a portfolio. Then she suggested that since the job at the pet shop was open again, Sonny should apply for it straight away.

'But I've got a job', Sonny said. 'I'm interning for Morgendorffer Consulting.'

'That's right!' his father said. 'We're a father–son team!'

'And I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job', Helen said. 'How's your paper coming along? Is there anything to see?'

On the spot, Sonny couldn't find any way to conceal that he had in fact completed the paper, and his mother went on to say that the point of his finding a job was so that he could learn from experience the nature of the working world. 'And in the working world you aren't usually working for a blood relation', she said.

* * *

><p>'So your mother wanted you to learn something about the working world', Jane said.<p>

Sonny shrugged and then nodded.

'And have you?' Jane went on.

'Do you remember what I told you about the nut stand?'

'I think so. Worse than school? Less space, stupider rules, and nowhere to be away from Kevin?'

'Now here there's no Kevin, there's a tolerable amount of space, and the rules have at least some reason for them, because the animals do have biological requirements. Still, if my only choice in the working world is going to be between a nut stand and a pet shop, it's looking pretty grim.'

Jane grimaced sympathetically. 'Well, I'll drop by any time you like for moral support. Any chance of parole?'

'Thanks for the support, and I figure I'll be able to make a case to be allowed to quit once Quinn finishes up at the nut stand, which I expect she'll do once she's earned the five hundred dollars for her portfolio.'

'At least you managed to stick her with that job, despite her allergy. Isn't that something?'

Sonny shook his head. 'Not really. The allergy isn't an issue any more because "Nutty World" stopped using the dye—on my recommendation, as conveyed by my dad. All the customers at the nut stand love Quinn's bouncy personality and her bouncy hair, and the manager says she's the best salesperson he's ever had. The only way she's missed out, from her point of view, is that they fired Kevin before she started. So to sum up, this place is less bad for me, but "Nutty World" is much better for Quinn than this. I figure it's pretty much a wash.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'It Happened One Nut' by Rachel Lipman<strong>_


	33. Storm In A Tinpot

******Not So Different**

_**33. Storm In A Tinpot**_

Sonny sat on his bed, leafing through an old journal. His job at the pet shop had cut into his time for hanging out with Jane, eating pizza, and watching _Sick, Sad World_, and he was trying to decide whether it was worth keeping up his journal writing.

* * *

><p><em>Wednesday: Woke up to find had still not died in night: condemned another morning in 'burbs. Good day at school: managed to sleep through most of two classes. Hung out with Jane after school, watched <em>_Sick, Sad World__ (faces of baby Jesus and ET wall of shower)._

_Thursday: Woke up to find had still not died in night: condemned another morning in 'burbs. Fair day at school: managed to sleep through most of one class. Hung out with Jane after school, ate pizza._

* * *

><p>He skipped forward.<p>

* * *

><p><em>Tuesday: Woke up to find had still not died in night: condemned another morning in 'burbs. Very good day at school: managed to sleep through most of three classes. Hung out with Jane after school, watched <em>_Sick, Sad World__ (drunk while administering driving licence test), ate pizza._

_Wednesday: Woke up to find had not died in night: condemned another morning in 'burbs. Pep Rally Day at school (bad: duh). Retreated to roof with Jane. Read in newspaper huge storm approaching Lawndale, possibly hurricane. Discussed with Jane idea town being devastated; agreed could be cool. Suspect Jane attracted post-apocalyptic scenario possible artistic inspirations. Question: given insignificance Lawndale, anybody notice, care, if whole town blown away?_

_Kevin, Brittany also on roof, making out. Had not believed Li's warning approaching hurricane: smart or stupid? Accepted authority newspaper report. Kevin (characteristic general life-incompetence) let door shut, trapping all on roof, storm approaching. Have always expected die Nowheresville but, as Jane said, not so soon. Interesting: Jane, self too cynical, ironic, to panic completely; Kevin, Brittany too stupid._

_Forced take refuge water tank shack (lack alternatives). Uncongenial environment, made more so presence Kevin, Brittany. (Brittany's mammary glands particularly obtrusive small space.) Contemplated possible reactions of family, friends our non-appearance. Brittany grace acknowledge maybe even Jane, self, missed. Self admitted probable distress parents; Quinn hard to say. (Jane: parents not in town to notice, Trent probably asleep.)_

_Forced change judgement prudence of move into shack: appeared danger collapse as storm continued. Shack door stuck. Brittany, Jane, even self, accepting risk emerging into storm over risk buried ruins, combined incite Kevin feat of strength: broke down door with bonehead. Emerged discover storm over. Brittany gave Kevin credit. Jane, self, suggested also credit him rainbow._

* * *

><p>He skipped to the next page.<p>

* * *

><p><em>After escape from roof, Jane, self, made way home. Near home car crashed into tree: driver (Dad) and passenger (Trent) unhurt. Had set out into storm rescue mission Jane, self, on noticing non-appearance. Genuine profound concern. Even Trent active: hugged Jane great relief. Hugged me ('you're okay too; cool'). Strange. Long long time since hugged. Dad also hugged (me, not Jane—relief). Very strange. Father–son bonding? Hugged him back. Extremely strange. Mom also relieved; passed over Dad's crashing car. Even Quinn seemingly positive about self. Later discovered Mom, Quinn, expected self good sense take shelter, discouraged rescue mission folly, but Dad determined act masculinepaternal role, bonded with Trent. Denied rescuer role, Dad congratulated 'his boy' (self), gave undeserved credit 'looking after' Jane (gender stereotypes). Extremely awkward, even with Jane understanding. Still, admitted alive better than dead, whatever say sometimes. Not best plan spend life waiting __rigor mortis__ set in. Must take care not present too positive public._

_Hung out with Jane, went home early. Mom and Dad decided pizza dinner. Quinn back normal._

_Thursday: Woke up. Admitted self pleased, even if morning in 'burbs. At school stayed awake classes in order finish writing lengthy journal entry storm yesterday. Later, still managed sleep through most of one class. Hung out with Jane after school, watched __Sick, Sad World__ (tobacco pouches made from foreskins). Mom back normal. Not sure Dad. Not sure self._

* * *

><p>Sonny closed the volume and tapped the binding against his chin. He scratched behind his ear. Then he set the book down, picked up another one, and began leafing through it.<p> 


	34. Under The Same Roof

**Not So Different**

_**34. Under The Same Roof**_

The doorbell rang and interrupted Sonny's evening reading and his father's post-prandial somnolence. As Jake shifted from stertorous to stuttering, Sonny rose and answered the door. Jane stood on the doorstep, holding … a small suitcase? … and her easel?

'I'm not picky', she said. 'The manger will do fine.'

Sonny glanced back over his shoulder at his father, who was still wondering who could be calling at this hour. 'Just a minute, Dad', he called, and then stepped outside to talk with Jane.

'You don't have many rules at your place, do you?' Sonny said.

'There is one about not lighting fires in the rooms that don't have fireplaces … but not many, no. So?'

'Do you remember what I said to you that time you invited me to sleep over at your place when the Yeagers were staying here?'

Jane's eyes narrowed with the effort of concentration. 'Something about how being a Lane I didn't really understand other people's parents? You mean something like how other people's parents have rules about not having boyfriends or girlfriends to sleep over? But that other time, wasn't the problem that my parents weren't home, only Trent?'

Sonny's cheek twitched. 'Maybe, I guess. I mean, that was what Mom said … I suppose we could try talking to them. Is there a specific reason you want to sleep over?'

'You mean apart from looking for some action with my … "_boyfriend_"?' Jane made "scare-quotes" in the air with fingers as she bit off the word in reference to the conversation they'd just had about parental attitudes. 'Ironically, it's because my parents _are _home this time, both of them. Well, not just that. I mean, that's bound to happen from time to time, with it being their house. But Wind and Penny have both showed up to stay as well. Wind's been known to drop in on occasion whenever his most recent marriage is going through a rough patch, but I don't think Penny's been in the country for ten years. Her Central American craft stand was destroyed by a volcano, so she's regrouping for her next effort in socially conscious community entrepreneurship. And Wind's having one of his emotional crises over his marital relationship, and Dad's come home with a batch of photos that he's developing all over the house, and Penny's brought a parrot from Central America and when you walk into a room you never know whether it's going to fly at you. So I can't get to the phone, and I can't get to the bathroom, and I can't get to the refrigerator, and I can't get to the television, but I can get over here, and I really will sleep in your manger, or failing that your garage, because it's still got to be a better option than going home. What do you think the chances are of talking your parents round? I'm putting my faith in your abilities.'

'Well, I do have one ace up my sleeve. But you'll have to let me tell your story my way.'

Jane shrugged. 'Naturally. I may not be as smart as you, but I know not to keep a dog and bark myself.'

'Am I a dog in this analogy?'

'Only if you want to be. What kind would you prefer? A retriever? Always brings the game home?'

'Stop now before you get an idea for a painting. In fact, come inside and we'll get this over with. But I suggest you leave your impedimenta just outside the door until I've got the lie of the land.'

They walked inside together and found Sonny's father unusually attentive. 'Hey, Jane o!' he said.

_Hmm_, thought Sonny. _Dad? Mom? Tactics? _He gave Jane a half-nod which she interpreted correctly. 'Hey, Mr Morgendorffer', she said. 'Good to see you.'

Sonny cut in before his father could say any more. 'Dad, do you remember when we went to Grove Hills?'

'Ah … sure! But that was with … um … Jodie, right? Not Jane?'

'You remember we left Quinn behind?'

'We left Quinn behind! What happened to her?'

'Dad, it was months ago. Everything's fine now. There's nothing to panic about.' When Sonny could see his father's stress level dropping, he continued, 'But something did happen. We didn't want to mention it at the time—I think Quinn didn't want to talk about it. But the plan for her to stay with one of her friends while we were away fell through somehow, and things ended up with Jane taking her in for the night, which I think you have to admit was pretty decent of her, even if she never wanted to make a fuss about it.'

Sonny's father seemed happy to agree. 'Yeah, thanks, Jane. Uh …'

Sonny cut in again. 'The reason I'm bringing it up now is that Jane needs somewhere to stay temporarily. A number of her relatives have turned up to visit at her place unexpectedly, and now it's getting a bit crowded over there. So I figure the Morgendorffers kind of owe Jane a favour and I thought she could stay in our guest room. Just until Jane's relatives leave, of course. I mean, if that's all right with you.'

'In the guest room? Well, that should be …' His father looked anxiously from Sonny to Jane and back. 'I mean … ah … have you talked with your mother about this?'

'We're just going to find her now. Can we tell her that it's all right with you?'

'Well … I think this is the kind of thing we should all discuss as a family…'

'You know, Dad, it's just a matter of having a friend stay over for a few nights in the guest room. Is that a big deal for some reason? Jane let Quinn stay at her place, and Quinn isn't even really her friend. Jane was just doing her a favour because she's my sister.'

'I tell you what! I'll go find your Mom right now and talk to her about it! How's that?'

Sonny's lips tightened and relaxed. 'All right if we bring Jane's things in while you do that? I don't think we should leave them outside.'

His father was already hurrying from the room. 'Sure thing, Sonny', he said over his shoulder.

As Sonny helped Jane bring her suitcase and easel inside, he said to her, 'One part of Dad wants to believe that I actually have a girlfriend that I'm trying to sneak into the house under my mother's nose and is experiencing a sort of vicarious masculine pride in it; another part thinks it's his parental duty to keep me in line; another part is worried about giving us an answer that Mom won't like and catching hell from her for it; and the best part of him genuinely wants to do you a favour because it's the decent thing to do. And when he finds Mom he'll be going off in three different directions and the first thing she'll be focussing on is that he's overreacting—so when we get down to business with her, she'll be trying to show that she's not overreacting, which is advantageous. Plus', he said as they set Jane's things down, 'explicit permission to bring your things inside makes it that much harder to turn round and throw you out again.'

'You're just loving having somebody to explain this to, aren't you?'

The conversation was cut short by the return of Sonny's father, accompanied by Sonny's mother, who spoke to Jane first.

'Hello, Jane, how nice to see you again. Please sit down and make yourself comfortable. Has anybody offered you anything to drink?'

'I'm good, thanks, Mrs Morgendorffer. Nice to see you again, too', said Jane as she seated herself.

'I hope you'll excuse us', Sonny's mother continued. 'We just need to have a quick family conference in the kitchen. Feel free to turn the television on if you like.' Jane was already acting on her suggestion as Sonny's mother ushered her son and her husband out of the room.

Sonny's mother closed the door carefully behind her and said quietly to him, 'You know we talked about this when the Yeagers were staying here and you wanted to sleep over at Jane's.'

Sonny was ready for this. 'But Jane's parents weren't home, then. You're both home now.' He didn't go so far as to assume a supplicatory expression, but he looked his mother steadily and directly in the eye. He could see that she was wavering, and continued, 'Didn't Dad tell you about Jane taking Quinn in for the night when we were at Grove Hills?'

'Quinn was supposed to stay with the Griffins while we were away. I had to beg a favour from that witch Linda.'

Sonny shrugged. 'I'm not able to tell you the whole story of what happened, but I do know that Quinn showed up at Jane's door that evening needing somewhere to stay, and Jane did her that favour just because Quinn's my sister. And now Jane needs somewhere to stay. Her place is overflowing. On top of everything, somebody's even brought a parrot into the house, and she can't get a moment's peace. I don't know where she's going to find a space she can do her schoolwork in', he concluded with strict technical accuracy.

'I know!' his mother said. 'Jane can stay in Quinn's room! Then we won't have anything to worry about. Don't you agree, Jake?'

To Sonny's eye, his father, who'd been silent throughout this exchange, just looked relieved to be off the hook, and rapidly concurred. Sonny sized up his mother. _Pushed it as far as I can_, he decided, and headed back to the living room to break the bad news to Jane. His mother followed him.

'Jane!' Helen said. 'Sonny's told me about what's been happening at your house. How would you like to stay here for a while?'

Jane stood up. 'Thanks, Mrs Morgendorffer. I really appreciate this.'

'Oh, it's our pleasure. I'm just going to get things ready for you upstairs. Jake, come and give me a hand, please.'

When his parents had gone upstairs, Sonny took the seat next to Jane and said, 'But.'

'All right, out with it.'

'You remember you said you weren't picky, and you'd sleep in the manger? Well, you're not sharing with the barnyard animals, you're sharing with Quinn.' He paused. 'Now I wish I were the artist. Mere words can never do justice to that expression on your face.' After a moment's thought, Sonny went on, 'Quinn's probably not going to like this either. Don't let on to her how you feel about it. I can just imagine her being clueless enough to say to Mom and Dad: "If she's Sonny's friend, why can't she sleep in Sonny's room?" That scene would have to be fun to see. Even more than if Mom brings up the story about Quinn staying at your place that time and presses Quinn for an explanation she surely doesn't want to give.'

* * *

><p>Helen was out for her pre-breakfast speed-walk when Jane came jogging past her. Helen called out and Jane slowed so that they could match pace.<p>

'Oh, hi, Mrs Morgendorffer. Didn't see you there.'

Helen dismissed the matter. She had something else she wanted to bring up with Jane. '… I thought … well, Sonny's so hard to talk with …'

Jane answered with machine-gun rapidity. 'Maximum of three questions. No betrayals. Immunity from prosecution.'

'Agreed. Depressed?'

'No, just realistic.'

'Still getting … beaten up?'

'Not for months.'

'Se- … sorry. What I mean to say is, is there any girl he's … you know … specially interested in?'

Jane stopped for a moment, but then picked up again so as not to fall behind. 'If there is, Mrs Morgendorffer, he's keeping it a secret from everybody, including himself.' Then she raced on.

* * *

><p>Sharing a room with Quinn was less than ideal, but Jane was still liking it better than sharing a house with her own entire family. She spent hardly any of her waking time in the bedroom. She was trying to show her appreciation (and avoid Quinn's room) by setting the kitchen table for dinner and folding the napkins 'artistically', when Jake, who was cooking, struck up a conversation with her. He too wanted to ask her about Sonny. She laid down for him the same conditions she had imposed on Helen and added a new one about getting him to talk his wife into finding a new speed-walking route, thinking that their encounter had been the kind she didn't want to repeat.<p>

'Done!' Jake agreed, and immediately posed his first question. 'Age?'

'Seventeen.'

'Uh … height?'

'Five foot two.'

Jake paused, as if groping for another question. Finally he asked about Sonny's favourite colour. Jane checked for a moment, and then when she answered Jake chimed in unison with her, 'Black.'

'Oh, that's too obvious', Jake said. 'Can I have another one?'

* * *

><p>Sonny was reading a book. His father was reading a newspaper. Quinn was reading a milk carton. They might have rules in the Morgendorffer household, but 'no reading at the dinner table' wasn't one of them. Jane asked whether Sonny could tear out a chapter for her, but his book was from the library. Sonny's mother thought that she and Jane could chat. Jane showed what she thought of that idea by grabbing the milk carton from Quinn and starting to read out the Recommended Daily Intake information under her breath. Both Helen and Quinn were mightily put out, and something unpleasant might have happened if the doorbell hadn't rung at just that moment, piquing people's curiosity. Sonny was glad for the pretext to leave the table.<p>

When he answered the door, he found Trent, looking for Jane. Sonny showed him into the kitchen, and noticed that while he'd been out of the room his mother had picked up his book. Trent inhaled a deep appreciative breath of the food smells. When Jane greeted him, he explained that he wanted her to know that he'd be living in the Tank for a while.

'The Tank?' Sonny's mother queried.

'It's a van', Jane explained, 'or it was once.' Then she asked Trent why he hadn't phoned.

Trent said that he hadn't been able to get near the phone. Then he tried to compliment the food. Jake fell for the transparent flattery, even though Trent couldn't tell the difference between spaghetti and fettuccine. He could tell, though, that it was 'not sticking together at all'.

'Trent, my man', said Jake, 'you want to stay for dinner?'

'Well, it is nice and warm in here' said Trent. 'Not like the Tank.' He was obviously ready to see how far he could push his luck. 'I bet your doors lock, too.'

It turned out that Trent's luck could be pushed quite a long way. Sonny's mother invited him to stay the night. She wasn't just being generous, though: she said that Trent could share Sonny's room.

Quinn shot Sonny a look. Obviously she _had_ thought it was unfair that she was the one who had to share a room because Sonny's friend was staying. Sonny didn't let himself react.

Later that night, Sonny and Jane were sitting at the table in the living room playing Scrabble, when Quinn, dressed for a date, came in and walked up to Jane.

'You're an artist, right?'

'I've been known to push the paint around. Why?'

'Art fascinates me.'

Jane looked and sounded doubtful, and rightly so, because what Quinn really wanted was advice about the colour of makeup to use in contouring her eyelids. Jane couldn't answer without seeing the actual cosmetics, so she was immediately dragged upstairs by Quinn, shouting, as she was hauled away, 'Don't touch my Q!' From anybody but Jane, Sonny would have taken that as an insult. He was studying the board and his tiles as he waited for Jane to come back when the doorbell rang. He stood up in response, but his father got there first and called out, 'Quinn, your date is here!' as he reached for the handle. When he opened the door he revealed somebody Sonny recognised: Monique, Trent's friend, the one he'd met at Axl's piercing parlour and who had helped to convince him that he should get a hole in his navel. The hole was still there, too.

Sonny's father, of course, knew none of that. When he saw Monique, he just followed on from his previous assumption that he was answering the door for Quinn's date.

'Wow!' he said. 'I really _don't_ know my kids! Unless—you're not by any chance looking for … Sonny, are you?' He took a half-step backward, holding the door wide open and looking over his shoulder towards Sonny.

Sonny's gaze caught Monique's eye. 'Oh, hi, Sonny!' she said. 'Is this your place?'

Before Sonny could find his voice, his father swivelled spasmodically back and forth, his face contorting, until he ended up facing Monique again and saying, 'You're not called—"Foxy Mamma", are you?'

Monique just shook her head in puzzlement, but his father's confusion made Sonny feel more normal. 'Dad, this is Monique, a friend of Trent's', he said.

Jake straightened his back, squared his shoulders, and lifted his head. 'Oh, you're here for Trent!' he said. Half-turning towards the interior of the house, he called, 'Trent, your date is here!'

Sonny was still watching Monique, who was shifting from one foot to the other as she waited at the door. 'Say, Sonny', she said, 'did you end up deciding to—'

Sonny guessed she was about to say something incriminating and cut her off. 'No, I'm still thinking about that', he said. 'Dad, I met Monique when I was out with Trent helping him pick a birthday present for Jane. We saw something else in a shop and we all talked about whether I should buy it for myself, but I still don't know whether it would be a good idea.'

Sonny was a little relieved when his mother came into the room at that moment to provide a further distraction, but without having registered what he'd just said. Monique seemed to have picked up the subtle indications Sonny was making with his face about not letting on in front of his parents. In any event, all she said was, 'Like I said before, Sonny, I wouldn't worry too much about what other people might think.'

To Sonny's further relief, Trent and Jane came down the stairs together, Trent brushing his teeth. Sonny's mother wanted to know where Trent was going and when he'd be back. His answers were 'Out' and 'Later'. When he'd left with Monique, shutting the door behind him, Sonny's mother said, 'Somebody should talk to that young man about the lifestyle choices he's making.'

As Sonny's parents left the room to return to whatever they'd been doing, Sonny stood by the window watching Trent and Monique walk away. Jane came and stood beside him. After a moment, she said, 'Penny for 'em, Morgendorffer.'

'I was just thinking—', Sonny began.

'I knew that, obviously. When are you not? Why do you think I offered you a penny for your thoughts?'

'You can have them free of charge. I was thinking that I've seen people going off on dates more times than I'd like to count, but it's always been Quinn and her natural prey. This is my first time actually seeing something different.'

Jane sighed and shook her head. Then, after a minute's pause, she shook her head again and said, 'Snap out of it and let's get back to the game.'

They had only just turned away from the window when the doorbell rang again to announce Quinn's date, but when the second couple had departed, Sonny and Jane were able to return their attention to Scrabble.

As they played, Jane mentioned what Trent had told her about the latest events at the Lane house. Adrian and Courtney, two of the four children of Jane and Trent's sister Summer, had arrived for a visit. Sonny had heard before from Jane about how Summer's children ran away from home repeatedly. With this further increase in occupancy levels at the Lane house, it seemed unlikely that either Jane or Trent would be in a hurry to leave the relative comfort of the Morgendorffers'. Jane did tell Sonny that she hoped his father would honour the deal she'd made with him and talk his wife into finding a new speed-walking route, because she (Jane) much preferred to run without parental, or quasi-parental, intrusion.

'Dad?' said Sonny. 'Talk Mom into something? That's an interesting concept.' He paused. 'I suppose you can trust him to make the attempt—that is, if he remembers.'

The next morning both Jane and Trent encountered some of the disadvantages of a more intrusive style of parenting than they were used to. Jane and Helen returned from their pre-breakfast run or speed-walk together and Jane reminded Jake of their deal, which he'd forgotten. Then when Trent came into the kitchen, Helen took issue with him about how late he'd been out the night before (he and Monique had spent four hours breaking up), thus distracting attention from Quinn. Quinn, with her typical and strategically short-sighted gabbiness, had already unnecessarily drawn attention to her behaviour by offering an obviously confected excuse for having overslept. Now she seemed to be jealous of Trent for usurping her role as the one in trouble for staying out late. Then, when Helen got up to the part where appropriate punishment was discussed, Quinn, against her own interests, tried to get the spotlight back on her own behaviour. Sonny couldn't decide which was weirder: his mother acting as if she had authority to impose a penalty on Trent or Trent acting as if it were so (Quinn not having the sense she was born with was something he was used to). Trent apologised and said, 'We don't really have any rules at our house. Right, Janey?'

'Well', said Jane, 'there's that one about not building any fires in the rooms that don't have fireplaces.'

'That sounds like a good rule', said Sonny. 'Do we have that rule in this house? I can't remember its ever being mentioned.' This succeeded in diverting attention from Trent to him, and before anything else could happen the doorbell rang and Sonny's mother went to answer it.

The details of what happened next Sonny only learned later from Jane. It was Jane and Trent's mother at the door, and whatever had been in her mind initially when she decided to come round, she had eventually appealed to Helen for help in getting her house back. She too was on the verge, having been pushed there when Summer showed up to reclaim her children and then decided that once she was there she might as well stay for a few days.

Helen had responded by showing that she was Sonny's mother. She had suggested regular family dinnertimes, with everybody talking about how they'd spent the day. The Lane children and grandchildren had done the rest. None of them had come home with the intention of sharing with each other and nobody had to ask them to leave once they'd been confronted with that option. Another successful Morgendorffer master manipulation.

With Summer and her children, Penny, and Wind once again dispersed, Jane and Trent were able to return, as Jane said to Sonny at their leave-taking, 'to the benign neglect that has served us so well in the past.'

'I guess', Sonny said, 'that no matter what style parents you have, they will inevitably drive you crazy.'

'Well said, _compadre_. And so, _adios_.' And Jane made her exit.

Pausing before following her, Trent turned to Sonny and said, inexplicably, 'Well, it was fun.'

'Thanks', said Sonny, surprised to be pleased. 'I think it was kind of fun for my Dad. He sort of bonded with you, I guess. And … I haven't shared a room in years, and I never had a brother to share with at all. It was—different.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Lane Miserables' by Anne D Bernstein<strong>_


	35. Confrontations

**Not So Different**

_**35. Confrontations**_

'Good grief', said Sonny.

Jane said, 'It's lame DJs, Charlie Brown.'

Their discussion of Jane's theory that puppets make anything funny, even (Sonny's challenge to her) a plane crash into a nuclear power plant, had been interrupted by a large van from local radio station Z-93, which had disgorged into the grounds of Lawndale High two garish individuals who identified themselves, without evidence of shame, as 'Bing' and 'The Spatula Man'.

This manifestation was met with brimful excitement by Ms Li, either deluded or lying that DJs, or at least so-called 'wacky' DJs, counted as 'celebrities', whose presence would reflect positively on the school. She avoided denying Sonny's educated guess that the radio station would be paying a large fee in exchange for permission for this banal stunt.

After she'd gone, Sonny turned back to Jane and gestured at the radio station clowns. 'Could puppets make them funny?'

'I withdraw my theory.' The way most of the students were lapping up the act, there was nothing else Jane could say.

Among the students who lapped up the act was Quinn, as Sonny discovered over dinner that night, when she prattled about the DJs at length. As usual, she was in no way deterred either by Sonny's sarcastic responses or by the inattention of their parents. Their father was preoccupied with the delights of 'Taco Tuesday', which he was touting as unique (Sonny found it indistinguishable from 'Taco Thursday'), and their mother with another interminable 'business' phone call from her boss. Sonny had notes for four different character ideas inspired by wondering about the other end of those phone calls, but he hadn't been able to come up with one where the calls served a legitimate business purpose.

Just like her son, though, Helen could pick up key points from the conversation around her without giving it her full attention. She noticed when Quinn said something about the quantity of cheese Jake was taking, and squeezed into her phone conversation a reminder to her husband of what his doctor had said about cheese.

That was enough to set Sonny's father off on a rant. He plainly regarded both the doctor and his wife as killjoys. All he wanted to do was enjoy his tacos, with as much cheese as he felt like. Jake's rants were a familiar recurring feature of the Morgendorffer household routine, although this was an example of the less common variety in which he hadn't yet started directing revived resentment at his late father, 'Mad Dog' Morgendorffer. The really unusual features that tugged at Sonny's attention were the way his father was getting much more flushed than usual and dropping much more sweat than usual.

And when his father wheezed that he couldn't feel his arm, Sonny was instantly riveted. He could feel his face making an uncontrolled response. 'Dad?' he said, in unaccustomed tones.

His father fell face forward into the guacamole. That got Quinn's attention. 'Daddy?' she said, and her voice too had changed. And when Helen turned round and saw what had happened, she dropped the phone. It wasn't welded to her after all.

'Jakey!'

* * *

><p>At the hospital, Sonny was unsurprised when the doctor reported that Jake had probably had a heart attack. It had been the obvious possibility, so he couldn't see any <em>good <em>reason for his mother and especially Quinn to be so desperately rattled, given that the doctor emphasised the mildness of the attack. Sonny asked about damage to the heart and he read the doctor as genuine when she said she didn't think there had been much. She might just have been giving a stock answer, though; she went on to say that Jake should be fine if he adopted the right diet, exercise, and attitude. When would you _not _offer that advice for a heart attack patient?

What the doctor asked next, about any causes of stress in Jake's life, might have been a stock question too.

Helen, Sonny, and Quinn all looked sideways at each other.

The remark that bubbled to the top of Sonny's mind was: _Could we make a list of the things that don't cause him stress? because that'd be quicker._

When they saw Sonny's father in his hospital room, even _Sick, Sad World _was causing him stress. Sonny would have thought that his father had caught enough of the show in passing to know better than to take it seriously. It was only talking about bats, anyway, and how were bats supposed to be a harbinger of death? Sonny reassured his father and then turned the thing off just to be on the safe side. It didn't help, he felt, that his mother and his sister were still both overreacting as well. He didn't think his mother's strained protestations of intentions for future care (according to an instruction manual she was clutching, called _Heart Smart For Life_) were going to help, and his father responded histrionically to Quinn's announcement that she now planned to become a heart doctor (something which would put cardiology back a decade) by calling on her to avenge his death.

'You're not dying, Dad', Sonny said.

'Avenge me!' his father repeated.

_You're enjoying putting on this show, aren't you? _Sonny thought. Then he thought, _I guess if you've just had a heart attack, even a mild one, you're entitled to extract a little something for yourself from the situation. _He emerged from this train of thought just as his mother asked his father what she could get for him. _Well, fair enough_, he thought.

Then Jake told them what he wanted.

* * *

><p>'Is this the grandmother who said she'd give you a hundred bucks if you wore a necktie?'<p>

Jane and Sonny were walking between classes, passing a huge 'Z-93' banner hanging from a fence.

'Both my grandmothers said that.'

Before Sonny could tell Jane any more, they were ambushed by DJs. Sonny had been trying hard not to remember which of the buffoons was which, but the one with multicoloured hair announced frenetically, 'Spatula Man, I see a couple of ladies here who I bet know how to par-tay!' At the same time, for reasons Sonny didn't want to think about, 'Bing' pumped his elbow sideways in the direction of his unindicted co conspirator, who was holding a small and unnecessarily ornate chest with a Z-93 sticker on it.

Sonny looked sideways at Jane. Jane looked sideways at Sonny. He raised his eyebrows. She nodded her head.

Sonny put on his deepest and harshest voice, the one that people couldn't mistake. 'Excuse me, but if "a couple of ladies" is what you see then perhaps you should have the prescription for those sunglasses checked.' Then he and Jane moved on, leaving the dire duo in their figurative dust—although sadly Sonny had no doubt they would succeed elsewhere in their quest for Lawndale High students who were 'mental in the morning' and ready to 'par-tay cra-zehh'.

As if conjured by the thought, Kevin and Brittany walked past them, exulting in two merchandisers' key-chains which had been given to them for free, no doubt from a trove contained in the Z-93 chest.

* * *

><p>Grandma Ruth opened fire as soon as she arrived with the kind of subtly barbed dig at her daughter-in-law that you'd find in a stale comedian's stereotyped mother-in-law routine. When she was ahead 2–1 in the scoring she greeted her grandchildren.<p>

'Sonny, you look … you haven't changed a bit.'

'Yes, just this week somebody mistook me for a girl again. Sorry to disappoint you, but I guess that's what happens to a boy when his parents don't send him to _military school_.'

With that volley Sonny bounced her off nicely to Quinn, whose stethoscope she remarked on, which led them into a brief exchange about Quinn's plans to become a cardiologist, before Ruth headed upstairs to her ailing son—not without a parting shot at her daughter-in-law for failing to provide Jake with a bell, so that he was reduced to calling out to them.

* * *

><p>Looking back on that week afterwards, Sonny felt as if he'd spent most of it rebounding like a pinball. The next collision came during Language Arts, as O'Neill read from <em>Hamlet<em>: 'O! It offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwigpated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings.'

An ordinary incident in the study of Shakespeare, even if O'Neill was himself violating Hamlet's prescription, except that it was followed by the extraordinarily pertinent and yet ordinarily appalling sound outside the window of a 'wacky morning DJ' announcing an impending 'raunch-a-riffic list of 101 words for … sex!'

Most of the groundlings in Sonny's class, despite having their ears split, showed, by their enthusiastic response, no sign of their souls being offended. Of course he had no evidence that they had any souls.

In some ways a stranger experience came to him later in the day. Walking the hallway between classes, alone for once as his class schedule and Jane's diverged, he was approached by Stacy, similarly unusually separated from her Fashion Club cohorts.

'Um … Sonny?'

He was frankly surprised that she even knew his name. She hadn't mentioned it when he and Jane had been trapped with her on the Ferris Wheel at the pseudo-Medieval Fair. But he couldn't think of a justification for not responding to her.

'Yes? Did you have a message for Quinn?' It was the only explanation for her conduct he could think of.

'No, uh … I mean, it's your Dad who's the one that's … well, the one that had the heart trouble, right?'

Sonny was still at sea. 'A very mild heart attack', he said. 'No serious damage.'

'But it's still a heart attack—I mean, if it was my Dad, I'd be upset. I just wanted to say I was sorry to hear about it, and I hope he's okay and that you are too … I mean, your whole family. And, well, I guess if you're upset you've got your friend Jane to talk to, and I hope that helps.' As she made this speech Stacy kept glancing at Sonny and then away again and as it staggered limply to a halt she looked straight down at her feet.

All Sonny could think of to say was, 'Thanks for your concern. Look, I have to get to class now.' He hurried away, not looking back at Stacy's reaction. _Rebound …_

* * *

><p>At home he discovered his mother in the kitchen with his grandmother.<p>

'So the stories were right', he said. 'People really do use these peculiar rooms to prepare food.'

His mother was trying to prepare dinner from scratch (and to pretend that she routinely did so) and his grandmother was trying to embarrass her, which was pretty easy when she had failed to distinguish fish from chicken. He left them to it and headed upstairs.

As he passed Quinn's room he noticed her struggling with a book titled _Thrombocytopenic Complications After Stent Placement Post-Coronary Artery Angioplasty_. (It seemed wrong to describe Quinn, of all people, as struggling 'manfully'. Too bad there was no such word as 'moronfully'.)

He paused in her doorway to make a suggestion. 'Maybe you should start off with something easier. Many colouring books feature hearts—and rainbows.'

* * *

><p>A little later in the evening Sonny went into his father's room to see how he was recovering. Grandma Ruth was there feeding her son like a child, and then asked Sonny to take over for a minute while she went to do something else.<p>

Sonny's father was still playing the melodrama for all it was worth.

'My son! Born to carry on the Morgendorffer name! The sole hope of the family line! It may soon fall to you to shoulder the burdens of the man of the house. Your mother, of course, will be so stricken with grief she'll be unable to function. And Quinn, she's just so very young! Oh God, my little Quinn!' He started sobbing.

Despite the ham acting, part of Sonny was reluctantly impressed. He hadn't expected so much insight from his father into the relative capacity of the members of his family to cope if … if … but …

'Dad, the doctor said you'd be fine after some rest.'

'It was my one hope that I should teach you to be a man by my life, not my death!'

'Dad, you're not dying.' By this point, Sonny was happy for almost any interruption, even Grandma Ruth returning prepared to administer a sponge bath, a prospect which had the patient hiding under the covers, enabling Sonny's escape. _Rebound …_

* * *

><p>Lawndale High was still blighted by the plague of DJs. (All right, there were only two of them, but that was enough to constitute a plague if they were 'wacky'.) Their latest stunt was trying to find a girl ready to agree to a date with Upchuck. Sonny couldn't imagine why the rest of the crowd had gathered, especially its female members, but he was drawn in himself by what he presumed was the same sort of impulse that has some people rubbernecking at traffic accidents. Possibly Jane, standing next to him, had a similar impulse. Jodie's presence on the other side of Jane was the hardest to understand.<p>

For once one of the stunts from Z-93 received a rational response. At least one girl even threw a greengrocery item. None of them were sufficiently 'mental in the morning' to date Upchuck, even with a free bumper sticker thrown in as an incentive.

Jodie exhibited her naïveté by suggesting that not even Upchuck deserved this kind of humiliation. Sonny shook his head. 'Upchuck? You'd have more chance of humiliating the bumper sticker.'

The 'Spatula Man' was not discouraged by the response that Upchuck naturally evoked. He dived into the crowd to find an unlucky winner. His random approach brought him first to a reduced-strength Fashion Club. (Quinn wasn't there; the difficulty of medical textbooks had not yet deterred her from intensive preparation for her intended new career.) After they had rejected him—Sandi wouldn't pander, which implied that she didn't think Z-93 'fashionable'—the oaf moved on in the direction of Sonny—and then, recognising him from their previous encounter, moved on further to Jane. When she rebuffed him at first, he told her that she looked as if she 'could use a date'.

'Excuse me', Sonny said, 'but are you making an inappropriately salacious remark about somebody who is legally a minor and under the age of consent?'

When that remark repelled the intrusive presence, Sonny and Jane moved off together.

'This is going to get worse before it gets better', Sonny said to Jane.

'Am I legally under the age of consent?'

'If not, then the correct answer to the question I asked would have been "No", but Spittoon and the Fatuous Man don't have to know that, do they?'

* * *

><p>At home, Sonny found his mother and his sister in the living room. Grandma Ruth had vexed her daughter-in-law into an attempt at redecorating, and Quinn, after her difficulties with 'book larning', was struggling to teach herself surgery with an 'Operation' game.<p>

'Don't worry', Sonny said. 'When you operate on real people, their noses don't light up.'

Then the first horseman of the Apocalypse truly arrived, in the form of a phone handset ringing right next to Quinn's hand and going unanswered. When Quinn made it plain that it could stay that way for all of her, Sonny took over. But the call wasn't for Quinn, it was from Helen's office—and Sonny's sense of being overcome by vertigo was complete when she wouldn't answer either, asking Sonny to take a message. No sooner had he finished than, to prove to him that he hadn't been hallucinating, the phone rang again, this time for Quinn, and he had to take another message. When he explained that Quinn was studying, the caller couldn't believe that _he_ wasn't hallucinating. Sonny decided that he didn't want to be exposed to this environment any longer than he could help. Once he'd finished with the message pad, he went upstairs to see how his father was doing.

As he entered the bedroom, he was surprised to find his grandmother winding up an extensive apology to his father for not standing up for him against her husband, and took careful note. Then Ruth suddenly gasped, clutched at her chest, and sank back on the bed, complaining of feeling faint.

'Mommy?' said Sonny's father. Then he shook his fist at the ceiling and shouted, 'See what you've done, old man? How many more lives, Dad? How many more lives?'

Sonny went to summon help.

But, as he explained later to Jane (when they were safe at her house), all that had afflicted his grandmother was gas from his mother's 'heart smart' lima bean cupcakes. Still, neither his father nor his grandmother was inspiring him with confidence in his genetic inheritance.

'It could be worse', Jane said. 'You could come from a family of wacky morning DJs.'

'Don't remind me. Between Dad and the Z-93 Party Van, life's become a living hell at home and at school.'

'Don't worry. The van will move on soon. Or be destroyed in a mysterious bombing. I haven't decided yet.'

* * *

><p>Before any mysterious bombing could occur, the DJs moved on to the next pathetic stunt, a competition for students to win a free station T-shirt by explaining, on air, how Z-93 made them mental in the morning. With crowds clamouring to participate, naturally they picked on an innocent passerby: Sonny.<p>

'Once again', he said to Jane, 'I'm being personally addressed by a morning DJ.'

'That's it', said Jane, 'I want your autograph.'

As his arch-nemeses continued to badger him, Sonny told Jane that he thought it might be time for a little ju-jutsu.

'But …', said Jane, grinning, 'are you mental in the morning?'

'You know, I think I am.'

As Jane stared in astonishment, Sonny walked up to the DJs' rostrum to take the microphone.

'A few days ago, my father had a heart attack, forcing me to admit his mortality to myself for the first time. Accepting this grim new knowledge has been especially difficult, as I've been under constant, yammering assault by two utterly brainless and talentless so-called radio personalities. And so, for these reasons, I, Sonny Morgendorffer, am mental in the morning.'

Inside three minutes—three minutes which passed in stunned silence—the wacky morning DJs, Z-93 Party Van and all, were gone from Lawndale High forever, and the crowd of once-clamouring groundlings had dispersed like autumn leaves in the wind. Jane and Sonny were left standing by themselves in a deserted parking area. A couple of actual leaves blew past.

* * *

><p>Sonny's series of strange encounters was not yet quite over. Later that day he was approached by Sandi, who was concerned that Quinn's recent interest in cardiology might signal a return to her 'brain' phase and thus a renewed divergence from the One True Path of Fashion. She remembered Sonny's role in steering Quinn 'straight' when this happened before. Sonny told her that he didn't think the danger was real (if Quinn had got out of her intellectual depth with 'Operation', he couldn't see her theoretical interest lasting), but he promised to keep an eye on things and let her know if her intervention would be helpful, and they parted with what came uncomfortably close to mutual regard. Sonny had to walk away reminding himself what he could be dealing with: 'Fashion Club, <em>Fashion<em> Club, FASHION Club'.

* * *

><p>Helen had already been finding hard to take the way that her mother-in-law sniped at her about not paying what she, Ruth, considered sufficient attention to cooking. What really got her goat was when Ruth renewed her assault on Quinn's interest in having a career (Quinn was reading a medical textbook at the kitchen table), clearly implying that Quinn should abandon such thoughts in favour of concentrating solely on the domestic sphere in the way that Helen hadn't.<p>

'Just what are you getting at, Ruth?' Helen said.

Sonny, who made an unobtrusive entrance during this exchange, interposed.

'She wants you both to model your lives after hers. And who could blame her? After all, you were just telling Dad yesterday how you made all the right decisions in your life. Right, Grandma?'

To Helen's amazement, Ruth responded by pulling her head in and leaving the room with some feeble excuse about the laundry.

'You both owe me', Sonny said, before leaving the room again.

'How does he do that?' Helen said.

Quinn was equally baffled.

* * *

><p>Sonny checked in on his father and found him feeling a little better, but worrying about his performance as a father. He explained to Sonny that he never wanted to make his children feel the way his own father had made him feel.<p>

'Don't worry, Dad', Sonny said. 'How many of your children have you packed off to military school?'

'Hey …', said Jake, and then turned to take a long look at Sonny. 'You know what?' he said, in a voice returned to normal strength, 'I feel a _lot _better!' He leaped out of bed and raced out of the room. Sonny could hear him rejoicing all the way down the stairs.

The epilogue was Sonny's report to Jane over a slice of pizza. His father was back to his own version of normal, his mother and his sister were back on the phone, and his grandmother had cut short her stay. Jane summed up. 'So, with the Party Van gone, I guess your life is back to normal at school and at home.'

'You know, as stupid as both places are, I see now that they could be a lot worse.'

'Why, Sonny Morgendorffer, are you becoming an optimist?'

Sonny asked Jane to hold up her drink for a test. The glass was still half-empty.

Jane said, 'Guess it was just a phase.'

'Although the half that's there looks delightfully refreshing.'

At just that moment they heard the sound of a large vehicle pulling up outside the pizza parlour, followed by a loudspeaker announcement that the Z-93 Party Van would be broadcasting from the spot all week.

A rapidly gathering crowd cheered the news.

_Rebound …_

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Jake Of Hearts' by Dan Vebber<strong>_


	36. Odd Couple Pecking Order

**Not So Different**

_**36. Odd Couple Pecking Order**_

Sonny turned down Trent's invitation to accompany Mystik Spiral on their trip to Fremont for a gig, just as he had turned down Jane's invitation earlier, because he'd told his parents he'd keep Quinn from turning the place into a modelling agency while they went away for the weekend. Anyway, he'd been to Fremont with his father, and it was even deader than Lawndale. He'd only dropped by the Lanes' place—_driven_ by the Lanes' place—to let Jane know that he'd passed the test for his licence, complete (as Jane said) with grotesque picture to make it official.

The examiner had almost wept over the final release from his protracted relationship with Sonny. Sonny figured that if the man couldn't hack a life working for the Department of Motor Vehicles, and everything that went with that, his career choice wasn't Sonny's fault.

Jane hadn't made the same sort of display as the examiner, but she had invited Sonny inside for a celebration, and he'd decided he could spare just a few minutes. The plan for the celebration involved a large frosted cake. Really frosted. It had been in the Lanes' freezer waiting since the first time Sonny took the test, back when the examiner had not yet seemed like an old man. Sonny eventually decided he couldn't wait for the cake to thaw. Anyway, there was no point hanging round because Jane and Trent couldn't stay. The band were ready to leave for the gig, and they were paying Jane twenty dollars to drive The Tank.

Sonny had been over-cautious in estimating the time he needed to budget to make sure he was home before his parents left. Even at his driving speed, he still got back soon enough to witness all the squabbling over the packing. And when they'd finally gone, he had only about a minute to enjoy the solitude before it was ruptured by the Fashion Club. Stacy gave him a tiny wave, concealed from the vision of the others, and Sandi barely perceptibly gave him what could have been a nod of recognition, but Quinn just said, 'Good, they're gone. We're all alone.'

'Uh, excuse me', Sonny said to her (giving no acknowledgement to Stacy or Sandi), 'but I'm still here.'

Quinn magnanimously extended permission for him to stay, but asked him to be very, very quiet. Then the phone rang, and Sonny picked it up to find it was not for Quinn but from Jane, making her one phone call from custody. She had been given a ticket for a moving violation, and the officer who issued it had told her that, because she was from out of State, the hundred-dollar fine had to be paid at the sheriff's office right away. Neither she nor Mystik Spiral had the money, and so they were being held at the county jail.

To Sonny, as an attorney's son, the story didn't sound quite right, but he decided this was no time to play barrack-room lawyer, or to encourage Jane to. He didn't have a hundred bucks, though.

'Obviously', said Jane, when he pointed this out. 'Look, go over to my house. Use the door with the broken lock. There's some money in the living room table, in the drawer with the missing handle. Oh, and while you're there, Trent wants you to pick up his song notebook. It's under his bed in the burnt shoebox.'

'How am I supposed to get it to you?'

'You have a licence, don't you? And listen, hurry up. I'm a survivor, but I'm not so sure about the other guys.'

When he got off the phone, Sonny found that Quinn wouldn't let him escape the house without explaining why. He puzzled over it on the way to the Lanes'. She should have been happy to get rid of him, no questions asked. He decided it was her innate curiosity getting the better of the sense she didn't have anyway.

He found the way into the Lane house, the location of the money, and Trent's notebook without any difficulty. He hesitated for only a moment before deciding that it would be better not to look in the notebook, given what he knew about Mystik Spiral's lyrics. Then he went home to collect his backpack and a few things to put in it for the journey. Inside the house he noticed the absence of Quinn's cohorts, but saw no point in asking her where they had gone. Better they weren't there, and opening the mouth and wagging the tongue unnecessarily was Quinn's style, not his. Ready as he'd ever be, he went to the car, and as he prepared himself to drive he said, 'Okay, car, this is strictly between us. Don't ask, don't tell.'

He was still a little unnerved when the car started for him. He was a lot unnerved when Quinn hopped into the passenger's seat. She wasn't going to let him go alone in case something unexpected happened.

'You're worried about me?' he said.

'Let me rephrase that: what if something _cool _happens?'

'Well', Sonny said, 'I suppose it would be smart in case there's some emergency.' Looking back later, he decided that he must have been a lot more rattled than he realised at the time.

It didn't help when Quinn assumed control of the radio, on the grounds that there was only one kind of music she could listen to. He couldn't even get her to turn it down.

Still, if he'd had music he liked he might have started paying attention to it. He needed all the attention he had and then some for the driving. Slowly, cautiously, but legally, he got them out on the freeway without being killed.

There he was surrounded by a flood of traffic constantly overtaking him on both sides, but that had to be better than the alternatives: traffic banked up behind him with the drivers' hostility to him mounting, or driving at the same speed as the freeway traffic—_that _wasn't going to happen.

What _was _going to happen was that Quinn was going to criticise his driving. What would she know about it? Arguing with her distracted him, and he was taken by surprise when a giant truck passed them. Quinn told him to pull over and he was too shaken to resist, even though her intention was too appalling for him to have guessed at it, even from her. He was still too shaken to resist when she got him to change seats with her, and then drove off.

When he found his voice, he said, 'I can't believe I'm doing this. I can't believe I'm letting _you _do this. I can't believe _we're _doing this. Hey, when did _you _learn to drive?'

'God, Sonny, what do you think people do on dates?'

Practice on dates or no practice on dates, Sonny couldn't believe how relaxed Quinn was. She just told him he was too timid and then showed off her attitude by taking one hand off the wheel and resting that arm on the door with her elbow out the open window. 'I could do this all day', she said.

Sonny was on the verge of deciding that might not be such a bad idea—better than having to do the driving himself, anyway—when Quinn pulled over again so that they could change seats again. He had just started on his protest when he saw in his wing mirror what Quinn must have already spotted in the rear vision mirror—a hitchhiker, wearing a cowboy hat and a cowboy shirt and with a guitar slung over his back. Sonny was appalled at Quinn's recklessness in stopping for him. Quinn lied about recognising him as a cousin of one of her friends. Sonny tried to bring up the big gun, probable parental reaction, but Quinn spiked it, by referring to how their parents would feel about the car being taken on a hundred-mile joyride. She even used sarcasm. While he was still adjusting to being hoist with his own petard, she told him to drive 'and I'll keep him from murdering us'. Then, when the hitchhiker reached them and gave them his thanks, she said to him, 'You're not going to murder us, are you?'

'Shoot, no.'

'See?' Quinn said to Sonny, as she followed the hitchhiker's example and climbed into the back seat. 'All you have to do is ask.'

How could anybody argue with logic like that?

As they drove along, the hitchhiker, who introduced himself as Travis, achieved the easy feat of impressing Quinn, by retelling stories from _Little House On The Prairie _as incidents from his own life. When Sonny let his scepticism show, Travis offered to take them to the spot to prove his veracity.

'We have to get to Fremont and bail out the band', Sonny explained.

This set off another round of bickering between the siblings about timidity and recklessness, but Travis cut it short by saying, 'Band? Hey, what a coincidence! I'm a musician too.'

'And not a travelling guitar salesman carrying a demonstration model?' said Sonny. 'Well, bust my legs and call me Shorty.'

When Quinn asked Travis to play, and he offered her some country music, she said, 'It's practically the only music I can listen to.'

Remembering Quinn's earlier insistence on control of the radio dial, Sonny said, 'But before you said …'

'Shut up, Shorty.' Quinn renewed her request for Travis to play, and he started in on a 'little' Conway Twitty. It was just the beginning for Sonny of two unfortunately unforgettable hours of country music.

When Quinn had finished eating up the performance with a spoon, Travis said, 'Man, you don't know how nice it is to meet some real classic country fans.'

'Well, give us a call when you do', said Sonny, who had just pulled up in front of a bar inconsiderately named 'Mad Dawg's'. This was Travis's destination: he had told them that he had an audition there. After a farewell still not brief enough for Sonny's taste, they had only a short drive to the sheriff's office.

'We made it', Sonny said. 'I did it. I got us here in one piece.'

'Slowly', said Quinn.

'But surely.' Sonny remembered that moment, because it was his last good one for a long time. The money was missing. It wasn't in his backpack. It wasn't in the glove compartment either. There was only one place it could be: with Travis.

This revelation proved to be the prologue to another installment of that long-running program, '_Confessions! with Quinn Morgendorffer_'.

'Remember when we stopped at that little town so you could unclench your hands? Travis and I kind of went shopping.' For some reason Quinn thought it was a good idea to expand on this explanation by telling Sonny that she thought the outfit—the one Quinn had allowed Travis to 'buy' for her with Jane's money—was real gingham. It hadn't taken all the money, though. Oh, no. Travis had needed money for a bus ticket home. And he was going to pay it back …

Sarcasm failed Sonny. 'You moron. How are we supposed to get Jane and Trent out of jail?'

'Oh … see, I told you something unexpected would happen.'

_That was pretty weak_, thought Sonny, watching her nervous grin. _Even for Quinn._

_And that means I'm going to make her go back to that bar and get that cowboy to return the money. Because she may have seized control of the radio and she may have trapped me into picking that character up in the first place, but when the chips are down I am _not _getting beaten by Quinn._

Sonny's resolution carried them through the trip back to 'Mad Dawg's' and overrode Quinn's objections to his plan, but started to falter when they got inside the place. Sonny wasn't used to being in a bar. Quinn was, though—like driving, it was something she'd learned on dates. Her experience didn't help when they faced the bartender, though. Sonny looked at a man who would probably be one of his teammates if they ever made impassivity an Olympic event, and asked the man whether he'd seen a cowboy come in recently.

The bartender blinked once and continued wiping a glass.

Sonny looked round the room at all the cowboys.

'Um, he was kind of, you know, rugged looking.'

The bartender kept looking at them. Sonny looked round the room again.

His brain finally moved up one gear.

'He was here to audition for a job singing.'

The bartender looked at them and kept wiping, but allowed, 'We've had a few people in here like that.'

'This guy sings country music.'

'Like I said.'

Sonny capitulated to the inevitable and led Quinn back out of the bar, but now it was Quinn's turn to get them back on track. Cowboys, she said, were like all guys, and guys, Sonny knew, were a subject on which Quinn considered herself the undisputed expert. He wasn't sure what her plan was, but it had to be worth a try. She changed into the new outfit she'd just bought—cowboy hat, cowboy boots, gingham top, and long skirt—and they braved 'Mad Dawg's' again. This time Quinn not only marched right up to the bar but right up on top of it, and started to spin every man there a story about how she was a city girl who'd come out to Fremont with the bail money for some friends who'd been pulled over by the sheriff, 'and now some mean old cowboy's stolen it. Now, I'm not saying all cowboys are mean or old or thieves, but it does make me think twice about ever considering a cowboy for a boyfriend.'

It was a good reminder to Sonny that Quinn did know a thing or two about men. They started lining up to put money in a jar Quinn was holding. Unfortunately, one thing or two seemed Quinn's literal limit. When the third man up suggested she might be trying to flimflam them because she thought they were just dumb hicks and didn't really know cowboys at all, Quinn's line of patter sputtered to a halt.

Under the succession of events, Sonny was no longer normal. He stepped up to the man. 'I may live in the suburbs now', he said, 'but I reckon I still know a thing or two. My folks raised me out in Texas, and they raised me right. My Pa always said to me', he continued, still with strict accuracy, 'Sonny—that's how they call me, Sonny' _and_, he thought, _I've never been more grateful for it_, 'Sonny, he always said to me, you look out for your sister. That's what I'm here to do now. And I can tell you this', and he made use of the excellent verbal memory that Quinn could never appreciate the value of, 'I don't call 'em cowboys until I see 'em ride, 'cause a Stetson hat and them fancy boots don't tell me what's inside.'

'Hey, that's Conway Twitty. You like Conway Twitty music?'

'You bet your lonesome prairie campfire I do, partner.' Sonny stopped short of 'pardner'.

And with that, the patrons resumed filling the jar with cash.

Quinn congratulated Sonny on his good thinking. Sonny said, 'Shut up, Shorty.' Quinn frowned. The natural order was, for the moment, restored.

Sonny was still feeling on top of his game when they got back to the sheriff's office with the money they'd raised at Mad Dawg's. But Jane, Trent, and the band were no longer there. They'd been taken out of the jail to see the sheriff. Happily the deputy on duty made no difficulties about giving them directions to the sheriff, who was to be found at the local VFW hall.

Sonny and Quinn could hear shrill cries inside as they approached, and Sonny had to resolve a disagreement about who should go in first by having them go in together. The ruckus was only a large children's birthday party, at which, after a minute, they were able to locate Jane drawing temporary tattoos on the children's arms.

'Finally', Jane said.

'Sorry', said Sonny. 'It's been a long day.'

'Tell me about it', said Jane, but instead _she_ told _them _about it. The birthday girl was the sheriff's daughter, and the sheriff was letting them work off their 'debt to society'. It helped, Jane continued to explain, that the sheriff himself was a big Picasso fan. She nodded towards a bare-chested man (still wearing his sheriff's hat, though) with a Cubist design on his torso, enjoying the admiration of his adult guests.

Mystik Spiral was also making a contribution, in the next room. When Sonny walked through the door, he saw a ringer performing with them, a large sloppy man who was singing the traditional words of 'I've Been Working On the Railroad' as the band played. (Sonny found out from Jane later that the man was a random poser who'd latched on to them in jail.) Trent was interspersing his own original lines in alternation, in a more typical Mystik Spiral style ('Shatter my dreams in the morn', 'Wish I was never born').

They finished just as Sonny came up to hand Trent his song notebook. The kids loved the performance. _You can never tell with kids_, Sonny thought, and felt validated when the audience showed the same appreciation for the next number, a Mystik Spiral original.

When the party was over and they were all free to go, Sonny and Jane exchanged stories while the band loaded their gear into The Tank.

When Jane had heard everything she said, 'So, it appears you two _can _actually get along, hmm?'

Sonny looked at her. 'If you're thinking of repeating that remark, I suggest you ask yourself which of us is likely to have access to better legal representation if I have to sue you for defamation.'

Quinn said, 'We _did _make a pretty good team.'

'Quinn', said Sonny, 'I suggest _you _think about the implications of a possible future in which, over every family meal, in front of our parents, I ask you to tell us about what you've been doing lately andabout what you're planning to do next.'

Having elicited satisfactory reactions from both Jane and Quinn, Sonny made his farewells to Trent and the band, and then the two vehicles set out on the return trip to Lawndale.

When they were out on the freeway again, Sonny asked Quinn, 'Did you really mean that nice thing you said about us making a good team?' Before Quinn could answer, he said, 'Because in a team, strategic decisions should be made by the best strategist, and that means no more hitchhikers.'

'But look!' Quinn said, gesturing at a figure visible by the road ahead of them. 'It's Travis!'

'In his case, I'll make an exception', said Sonny, starting to slow down. 'Because if he's still hitchhiking, he hasn't spent that money he got from you on bus fare, so he should still have it, and you're going to get it back from him.'

'But … but how? What should I say to him?'

'One of us is good at strategising, and the other one is good at figuring out what to say to men to get them to do what you want. You know, you were right. So long as we both stick to our strengths, we do make a pretty good team.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Speedtrapped' by Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil<strong>_


	37. Fury, Signifying Nothing'

**Not So Different**

_**37. 'Fury, Signifying Nothing'**_

— '_Jane, do you need an attorney? I don't do criminal work but I'll get you somebody. Don't say anything to anybody until we get over there.'_

_Is that the only reason she can imagine why I would be calling her office? _Jane wondered. _Or does she say that to all the girls?_ 'No, Mrs Morgendorffer, I was calling about Sonny.' _And if that's the way you react when you think _I'm _the one who's in trouble, then when you find out it's your own child I think he can count on the legal back-up he needs._

— '_Sonny? What's happened to Sonny? Where is he? And where are you?'_

'As far as I know, he's got a shift at his job at that pet shop in the mall, and nothing's happened to him yet. He probably doesn't know what's going on. But I'm at school, and I've just been interviewed by the police—about Sonny.'

— 'You_ were interviewed about _Sonny_?'_

'They wouldn't tell me what it was about.' Jane hesitated for a moment. She knew what she had to tell Sonny's mother, but she hoped she wasn't going to be pressed for details. 'It wasn't too hard to get a rough idea of what they were getting at, though. Something to do with sexual harassment, or something like that.'

— '_The police think Sonny's been sexually harassing you? What on earth would make them think something like that?'_

'I don't know. But it's not just me. They're interviewing other girls, too.'

— '_They shouldn't be interviewing minors without their parents present!'_

'They're not. Well, not exactly. They rang my house, but they couldn't get anybody to answer the phone. So they had the school counsellor sit in on my interview as an "appropriate adult" or something, which itself is a joke, frankly.'

Helen interrupted. _'Is that the same one that said Sonny had low self-esteem when he started at Lawndale High?'_

'Yes, which should tell you something. Sonny doesn't have low self-esteem, he has low esteem for everybody else. But it didn't matter so much because I had enough sense myself to know what to say and what not to say. The thing is, they're interviewing Brittany Taylor now, and her so-called appropriate adult is her stepmother, Ashley Amber.'

Helen interrupted again. _'Is that the woman who was partnered with Brittany in that mother-daughter fashion show fundraiser?'_

'I guess so. I wasn't there.'

— '_Is she—well—as her appearance suggests?'_

'You mean dim? Well, Brittany certainly is, and that's the problem. I know that Sonny has no interest of any kind in her, and she's not the type to say anything against him out of malice, but she might say something that sounds damaging just because she completely fails to understand, and Ashley Amber might try to keep Brittany out of trouble but not Sonny. Plus, I don't know which other girls they may go on to interview. The whole thing's so crazy, anything's possible. That's why I thought you should know about it.'

— '_Thank you, Jane. You were absolutely right. I'll be coming to the school as fast as possible. But what about Sonny?'_

'If you're coming here, I was thinking I could head over to the mall to let Sonny know what's going on.'

— '_Oh, would you? Well, before I leave here I'll call Jake to see whether he can go over there too. Thanks again, Jane. Must rush.'_

But when Jane got to the pet shop, Jake wasn't there and neither was Sonny. When she went inside and asked for Sonny, she was told that he had been taken away by agents from the Fish and Wildlife Service (the Fish and Wildlife Service? Jane had never even heard of them), and that his father had gone with him. The man in the pet shop obviously didn't like being visited by the Fish and Wildlife Service and seemed to hold Sonny responsible in some way. Jane tried ringing the Morgendorffers' again, but only Quinn was there and she didn't know anything about what had been going on. Jane asked her to let her family know that Jane had called and to ask them to call back if they could.

But Jane heard nothing more that evening, or the next morning, and Sonny did not appear at school that day. All she could do was look around for Quinn. Before Jane could find her, she heard wild rumours about how Sonny had been arrested, how his locker had been searched, and how Federal agents were investigating the case, but nobody knew what it was really all about. Naturally some people suspected drugs were involved, and some were talking about school shootings and bombings (a couple were saying they'd always _known _Sonny was the type), and there were even a few weird theories about links with organised crime (some people had jumped from the sexual harassment idea to mobsters kidnapping girls to enslave them for prostitution), but Jane knew better than to believe the sort of things her schoolmates believed. Of course there were a few more reasonable people about, like Jodie and Mack, but they were as much in the dark as Jane, and had the sense not to make wild guesses.

In the end it was Quinn who found Jane first, bringing a message from Sonny. He was hoping Jane could meet him after school at the pizza place. Jane nodded. It didn't seem like a good idea to try to talk everything out with Quinn, but Jane had to ask her whether Sonny was all right.

'I think so', said Quinn. 'It's hard to tell with him, you know?'

'How about you?' said Jane. 'And your parents?'

'We're all coping, I guess. Maybe it's better if you talk with Sonny.'

Jane nodded again. But it was hard to wait.

When she finally met Sonny at the pizza place, he didn't look much different from normal. But then, he seldom looked much different from normal. She didn't want to push, so she decided to listen and not talk and to watch him closely. She knew him well enough to read his expression better than most people could.

Once they'd greeted each other, got their pizza, and seated themselves, the next thing he did was to thank her for calling his mother.

'It meant that she was at the school to witness the inter-agency taskforce searching my locker.'

'Inter-agency taskf—?' Jane caught herself and stopped mid-question. Listen, not talk.

Sonny continued unmoved. 'Fish and Wildlife, DEA, ATF, and the Secret Service.'

'Secret S—?' It wasn't fair. How could she not react when the story was as wild as this?

'At least nobody's accused me of plotting to assassinate the President', Sonny said, reading her mind. 'The Secret Service started out as a bureau in the Treasury Department to catch counterfeiters, and that's still one of their jobs, even if it's not the one that everybody thinks of in connection with them. Apparently there have been a few counterfeit notes detected circulating in Lawndale, and that's probably the hook that whoever started all this used to hang everything else on. ATF would have been brought in by the possibility of illegal firearms and explosives—you know how many people have been just waiting for me to shoot up the school—although for all I know there are allegations involving alcohol and tobacco as well. DEA, you can guess. And if I were involved in breaches of Federal law at my job, that could bring in the jurisdiction of the Fish and Wildlife Service. All of these agencies have received some sort of information from somewhere implicating me in something. I still don't know what exactly.' He took another bite of pizza. 'Plus, of course, there were the ordinary cops interviewing you, and Brittany, Jodie, and Andrea, and Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany, and I don't know which other girls. Half the ones in the school, possibly. But I gather you figured out what that part of the investigation was about.'

Jane nodded and let Sonny carry on.

'Luckily there's a first-rate firm of private investigators that's worked for Vitale, Davis, Horowitz, Riordan, Schrecter, Schrecter, and Schrecter before, and my mom was able to get them on the case straight away. So we should know more soon. Obviously somebody's out to get me, but if we're looking for a suspect the pool of people who don't like me is too big to work with. We need some other sort of lead. In the meantime, it's going to be weird while the rumours are going around, but those police officers and special agents and what-have-you will find out pretty quickly that there's no evidence to back up any of the allegations. Whoever did this was pretty dim about it, luckily. They would have done better to stick with just the school shooting angle, which a lot of people would have given a lot more credence. This way, the investigators are going to start looking at each other and thinking that one single eleventh-grader couldn't be implicated in all these different things and that there must be something else going on here. Probably they'll take a little longer than I did to figure out that there's a crank with a grudge behind this just because they're not as used as I am to people always having something against me for no good reason.'

Jane sat back and chewed another mouthful of pizza while she thought, still studying Sonny's face. 'This is more than somebody who doesn't like you. This is a _major _crank with a _major _grudge. It bothers you that you can't figure out who it could be.'

'I have to face facts.' Sonny's face moved only microscopically, but Jane could tell that this was his equivalent of a normal face falling. 'I'm not a private investigator, and until the people who are come up with more information, there's nothing else I can do. I just hope they're as good at their job as Mom says.'

Jane still didn't want to push, so she changed the direction of the conversation. 'You could probably do with the warning that there are some absolutely crazy stories going round the school. Are you coming back there? I think you should be prepared if you are.'

'Oh, I'll be back at school. And having people believe weird things about me isn't wholly new territory for me. I don't know whether you remember, but you said it best yourself: "Takes a licking, keeps on ticking". That's Sonny Morgendorffer.'

'Uh-huh. And how's your family taking it?'

'Well, Quinn's always seen me as a weirdness magnet, and she's pretty much dismissed this as weird rather than scary because I'm not letting it scare me. But I can still see that she's on my side, and that's actually kind of nice, although I haven't got around to telling her so. As for Mom and Dad, they can't help being a little worried, which is understandable, but they're also a lot outraged. At the same time I think somehow they like the feeling that for once we're all in this together.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Not that they ever would have wanted anything like this to happen, but now that it has there is some kind of psychological boost for them in being my champions. Mind you, as I said, I don't really need champions. The whole thing's bound to fall apart under its own weight soon, as anybody who wasn't a hopeless kook would have realised in the first place. But I guess I don't have to say that to my parents.'

Jane took a swallow of drink and leaned forward to study Sonny's face again. 'Does that mean you didn't need me to call your mom the way I did?'

Sonny chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment. 'Not … not _need_, I guess, but … it was ….'

Jane nodded. 'It was the thing to do, wasn't it?' It wasn't really a question. Sonny didn't say anything. He just looked at her. He wasn't saying anything because she'd said what there was to say. They finished the pizza without further conversation and then went back to Jane's house to watch interviews about alien abductions on _Sick, Sad World_.

The next few days at school were as weird as both Jane and Sonny had foreseen. Oddly, Jane found things more normal when she was with Sonny. People mostly avoided them, but that was what people mostly did anyway. Jodie and Mack both seemed to be making a point of speaking to them occasionally, but then again they both did that occasionally anyway and it was hard to tell whether this was different. Neither of them made any reference to the craziness.

It was when Jane was separated from Sonny by class schedules or other circumstances that the weirdness really oozed out of the walls. People, many of whom she barely knew, sidled up to her and asked her about the rumours. Did Sonny really have Mob connections? Was the FBI really after him? Had she ever heard him say anything suspicious? Was he really trying to build a bomb that could blow up the school? Was she ever scared of him? What was it like, hanging around with a wanted man?

Sometimes she started to think that it was weirder for her than it was for him, but she knew that couldn't be true, no matter how well his coping strategies worked for him. He proved her right when he told her about the weirdest thing that had happened to him. The Fashion Club had passed an official resolution of support for him. She knew she couldn't out-weird that. In any other circumstances she would have teased him about it for months.

The most normal thing that happened was that Sonny exploited the situation to get his mother to agree that he needn't go back to his job at the pet shop, or look for a replacement one. The pet shop was anyway reluctant to have Sonny back after the visit from the Fish and Wildlife Service, and Sonny's parents accepted that he'd learnt enough about the working world for the time being.

After a fortnight or so of digging, the private investigators came up with some solid leads. Sonny told Jane about a key discovery as they watched _Sick, Sad World _(another story about aliens, but this time the aliens were getting pizzas delivered).

'They're moderately confident that a number of the tip-offs to law enforcement originated with people connected with the Lawndale "Take Back The Night" women's self-defence group.'

'That's funny. There used to be a group like that at the school, but they couldn't find a new faculty sponsor to replace … ohh.' Jane looked sideways at Sonny.

Sonny kept looking ahead at the television. 'Exactly. At first they didn't think anything of it, but when it cropped up in their investigation repeatedly they thought it was worth mentioning in one of their reports, and when I persuaded my mother to let me take a look—well, even though I didn't know about the group once operating at the school, it wasn't hard to figure out.'

'All you had to ask yourself was "Who's a major crank with a major grudge against me who would also be connected with a women's self-defence group?" So what happens now?'

'I don't know exactly. Good private investigators usually have connections with law enforcement. And law enforcement agencies usually take a dim view of people wasting their time. Maybe they can be prompted to take steps to make their displeasure evident. Anyway, I passed on the name, and all I can do now is wait and see.'

Jane nodded, and then cocked an ear. 'In the meantime, I wonder whether those private investigators could solve the mystery of that new tune Trent's playing.'

Sonny listened for a moment too. 'What's the mystery? Trent's always playing new tunes and they're always—well—distinctive.'

'I think between just the two of us we can be honest. Mystik Spiral's songs suck. But listen again to what he's playing now.'

Sonny complied, concentrating for a minute. 'It's no worse than usual.'

'It's not that it's getting worse, and it's not that it's getting better, either. But it is getting more than usually … what would you call it? … help me out here, wordsmith.'

'Peppy?'

'That's it. More than usually peppy. Trent never writes peppy for Mystik Spiral.'

Sonny said, 'Hey, it's stopped.' They both looked round and a moment later they heard footsteps and then Trent appeared in the doorway. They exchanged friendly greetings as usual. Jane could see that Trent wanted Sonny to know that he wasn't paying attention to the craziness that had been going on. Then Sonny asked Trent about the song he was working on.

'It's just a song. I write songs, you know? And I gotta go now so I can practise it some more.' Trent turned to leave, then looked back over his shoulder. 'Uh, practise my, uh, same music that isn't any different from the other stuff I play.'

'See?' said Jane, when he'd left. 'There's a mystery there.'

'Well, if we can get the private investigators to sort that out, maybe they'd also look into the new weirdness with Quinn.'

'What's that?'

'Haven't you noticed anything unusual about her recently?'

'You mean the new style of outfit? The beret with the polo-neck?' Jane shrugged. 'Didn't she try out berets back when she thought she was a brain?'

'If she were going back to that phase, I'd know about it from the Fashion Club's reaction. But they had a meeting at our house just before I came over here, and she must have given them an explanation that satisfied them.'

'Suddenly it seems there's a lot of mysteries around. Do you remember all those flashlights we saw moving around in the woods that night last week when you came over here?'

'Oh, I found out the explanation for that one. Sorry, I forgot to tell you. With my being investigated by Federal agents as well as the police, Kevin decided that he and Brittany should spy on me to find out what I'm doing because he thinks I'm a menace to society and he has to save the world, or something. Mack figured that Kevin was going to try something stupid, and that he owed it to the team to stop Kevin humiliating himself. He got Jodie to tag along, so that made four flashlights. Mack and Jodie told me about it at school. They thought I might have noticed Kevin following me—which we kind of did, except we didn't know who had all the flashlights—and they wanted to reassure me that they'd put a stop to it.'

Jane got up from the bed where she'd been sitting. 'If Mack thinks it's his job to put a stop to things like that, do you think we should let him know that Kevin's probably going to do something stupid tomorrow?'

'What?'

'I don't know. He'll be awake, won't he?'

* * *

><p>The outstanding mysteries were all resolved when Sonny came over to Jane's a few days later to watch <em>Sick, Sad World <em>again. The Fashion Club mystery had temporarily deepened in the meantime, with all the members coming to school in the same new outfit, their public explanation being a show of solidarity with a member with an unnamed problem. It had helped to distract attention from the continuing rumours about Sonny, but he told Jane that those were dying away anyway. 'Short attention spans are common at Lawndale High', he said. He also told her that information had been leaked to him from confidential sources in the Fashion Club, and that the mysterious problem was a pimple on Quinn's neck. Jane thought it was still a mystery that Sonny had confidential sources in the Fashion Club. She teased him about that a little, but she didn't pry seriously. He might not be showing any signs that the law enforcement investigation or the weird rumours or anything that went with them had ruffled him, but she'd be glad to put the whole affair behind them.

Serendipitously, another mystery was dissolved when they heard Trent's new song coming from the television. It was an advertising jingle for a used-car salesman. They turned up the volume to hear it better, which drew Trent into the room with a slightly hangdog confession.

'You don't have to tell me. I'm a complete sell-out. But I really needed the gig.'

Neither Jane nor Sonny felt like giving Trent a hard time about it. There'd been too much weirdness in the last few weeks to worry about a little lowering of artistic standards to meet a pressing need for cash (to be precise, twenty dollars, an hour of free studio time, and a set of brand-new tyres, but who was counting?).

When Trent had left the room, Jane said, 'So, no extra work for the private investigators after all.'

'Mom showed me their last report today. Barch has skipped town and gone underground.' He shrugged. 'So O'Neill can wallow in yearning, never knowing what might have been. And I could spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. Nothing new there.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Esteemsters' by Glenn Eichler, 'It Happened One Nut' by Rachel Lipman, and 'The Lawndale File' by Peter Elwell.<strong>_


	38. Not Missing Much

**Not So Different**

_**38. Not Missing Much**_

Sonny realised he had just yawned hugely right into the phone. 'Sorry', he said.

— '_S'okay.'_

Jane's voice sounded just as slurred with fatigue as his own. They were both watching an all-night _Sick, Sad World _marathon, and they were sharing the experience by phone.

Jane's first idea had been that they should share the experience in person, and Sonny had had to explain the facts of life to her again.

'There's just no way my parents are going to agree to you and me spending all night alone together on a couch, at your place, at my place, or anywhere else', he had said.

Jane had protested that they'd only be watching television.

'Right', Sonny had replied, even more flatly than usual (if possible). 'Now convince them of that.' Jane had been silent, and Sonny had continued. 'Even if they believe your intentions, they'll say that it's just too easy to get carried away.'

'It's like they've never met you', Jane said. 'Do you suppose they're speaking from their own experience?'

Sonny had refused to think about _that_, and the subject had lapsed. So now he was on the couch in his living room, sprawled across some cushions, with one hand clutching a blanket half-covering him and the other cradling the cordless phone, with Jane at the other end of it possibly similarly arranged. She yawned back at him.

The woman on the screen said, 'I didn't mean to hurt him.'

Recognising the story from its original screening, Sonny muttered, 'The knife just slipped … sixty-seven times.'

'What can you say?' came Jane's response. 'Some people are just klutzy.'

Doing this over the phone wasn't the same as being on the same couch, but Sonny found the experience had its own distinctive charm. As the marathon continued his eyelids drooped more and more and as he became less and less aware of anything in his field of vision outside the screen it mattered less and less that Jane wasn't physically present. For that matter, he became less and less aware of what was on the screen, but he could still hear, and he and Jane had already watched nearly all these stories together before and could fill in any blanks. So long as he held on to the phone, Jane's voice was closer than it would have been in real life. He felt surprisingly comfortable as both visual and auditory perception became progressively disordered and disjointed.

Later he wasn't sure whether he'd stayed awake long enough to notice the sunlight leaking back into the room. The sun was definitely up when a full bladder roused him close enough to wakefulness to stagger to the bathroom. After relieving himself he must, in his state of semi-conscious confusion, have drifted back to the couch, because he was there, dozing fitfully, late in the day when he became aware of his family, all dressed up in evening formal wear for the Casino Night which the school had organised on the _Princess Fairy _luxury liner. They began rousing him to join them, despite his best efforts to burrow into the cushions. Sonny and Jane had initially resisted all efforts (made by Jodie Landon: of course) to sell them tickets to the event, but then Ms Li had made it mandatory. Besides that, the owners of the cruise ship were known by Sonny's father to be looking for a new advertising campaign, and so he was volunteering for the fundraiser as a stealthy opportunity to pitch for the business. Sonny's mother had volunteered to play the part of supportive wife. Quinn, of course, could never have resisted such a social occasion, but she was even more eager because she had somehow managed to get a date with an actual model called Marco. None of this was of interest to Sonny, but it had seemed like just too much effort to weasel out of, what with the prospect of the _Sick, Sad World _marathon absorbing his attention.

When Sonny's mother tried to get him moving again, he said, 'Just carry me to the car.'

His father said, 'You got too big to be carried to the car a few years ago, champ.'

Sonny groaned in protest, but was enabled to snatch a delicious few more slumberous seconds among the cushions as Quinn agonised over Marco's failure to appear. Sonny was delighted at the thought that Quinn might have been stood up.

'Shut up, Sonny! I have not been stood up.'

'Okay', Sonny said, without removing a cushion from his face. 'My mistake.' He drifted back to the edge of sleep.

When he roused again, Quinn was being cajoled by their mother with the suggestion that Marco might have gone to the dock to meet them there. With that, it was by Sonny's count a nett total of three Morgendorffer-equivalents that got into the car and set out: Jake, Helen, Quinn half-willing, and he himself half-conscious.

Disappointment awaited both half-Morgendorffers at the dock, in the form of the absence of Quinn's date Marco and Sonny's not-a-date Jane. For Quinn, this was agony; for Sonny, it was just life. Jane was probably asleep, which was frankly a better idea than Casino Night—it was where Sonny would have been had fate not pranked him again. Jane's parents would not have woken her for an occasion like this, and as for Trent …! Sonny would just have to find somewhere on the liner where he could take a nap undisturbed. He slouched through a room full of gambling fools, passing a poker table where Ms Li was being distracted from her play by Ms Onepu, whom Sonny would not have taken for the kibitzing type.

She wasn't kibitzing. She was saying, 'Are you sure this ship is safe, Ms Li? We're responsible for the children. I don't think the ship looked safe. We have to think of the children! We're responsible!'

In her way, Onepu was a glass half-empty person, but it wasn't Sonny's way. He steered clear of the poker table only to be waylaid by Mr DeMartino near the roulette table. For some reason he wanted Sonny to take his chips off his hands.

'Excuse me?' Sonny said.

'You know, as a _thank you_ for making me want to _kill_ myself a little less than the _processed sausages_ who call themselves your _classmates_.'

'Either you kill yourself or you don't, Mr DeMartino. You can't kill yourself a little less.'

While DeMartino was trying to figure that one out, Sonny shook him off and found his way out on deck. With all the action inside the gaming rooms, the deck was almost deserted. He found a comfortable deck chair and stretched out luxuriously. It was good being short.

It was not good to be on a ship with his classmates. They weren't all staying inside. He had just plunged into a contented snooze when he was roused by Kevin Thompson suggesting to Brittany Taylor an initiation into the 'Mile High Club'.

Sonny surfaced in order to say gruffly, 'Don't you mean the "Mile Deep In The Ocean Club"?'

Kevin snarled and clenched his fists but fatigue made Sonny care even less than usual, if possible. He let his eyelids fall on the sight, hearing Brittany dragging Kevin to somewhere more private before he drifted off again.

But Kevin and Brittany had not abandoned their foreordained mission of marring Sonny's life as often as possible. His dream of a fire-breathing cyclops was invaded by the noise of their screaming an alarm. Wait a moment, though—could that be the sound of the cyclops screaming in his dream? Yes, he could get back to that—or he would have, if Onepu had not come out on deck at that moment.

'Sonny!' she squealed. 'Sonny Morgendorffer! Did you hear some of your classmates screaming?' Her voice was too piercing for him to sleep through. He sat up reluctantly.

'I thought I heard something in my dream', he said flatly.

'There it is again!' she said. 'Listen! Do you recognise those voices? Has anybody been out here?'

'I've been asleep most of the time.' He lowered his voice and grumbled, 'As much as people let me', but Onepu's attention wasn't focussed on him.

'I knew this ship wasn't safe! I told Ms Li! We have to think of the children! We're responsible for them! What if some of them have fallen overboard!'

Sonny grunted resentfully. 'If you think somebody has fallen overboard, shouldn't you find the captain and give the alarm?'

'Yes! You're right! Thank you, Sonny! I'm so glad you know what to do!' Her shoes clattered on the deck as she ran off and Sonny sank back wearily into another doze.

The next time, just to top things off, it was his arch-nemesis that broke in on him.

'Sonny, I need your advice.'

Sonny had a sudden distressing flashback to the time when he had asked Quinn for advice. She had said that it was like a fairytale and that he was waking up from an enchanted sleep. With the roles reversed he didn't feel like that at all.

'Okay', he said. 'Who are you, and what have you done with my sister? On second thoughts, I don't care what you've done to my sister. Just go and be somewhere else.'

'But everybody's talking about how I've been stood up!'

'So? Let them.'

'I don't want them to talk about me like that. It upsets me. I do the things I do, I wear the things I wear, I say the things I say, so that people won't talk about me like that.'

'There's your answer. Do the things you do, wear the things you wear, say the things you say. Act as if you're not upset and it doesn't make any difference. Then they'll stop talking about you. It'll be a nine days wonder.'

'Nine days? I can't stand this for nine days!'

Sonny sighed, but before he could say any more they were interrupted by two voices shouting.

'The lifeboat! Where's the lifeboat?'

The second voice was Onepu's. 'I knew this was dangerous! We're responsible for these children! Oh, what's happened? What are we going to do?'

As they heard footsteps clattering towards them Sonny said to Quinn, 'As usual, Fortune smiles on you. There's going to be a huge distraction that will give everybody something else to talk about, so long as you go back to acting the way you normally do.' He looked hard at her. 'Including not being around me.'

Before Quinn could react, Onepu hurried up to them, talking volubly with a man Sonny took to be the captain. 'There!' she said, pointing at Sonny. 'He's been on deck all the time! Haven't you, Sonny? Are you sure you didn't hear anything? The lifeboat's missing and I'm sure I heard some of your classmates calling out. Who's been out on deck with you?'

'Quinn', said Sonny, waving a hand in her direction. 'Before that, you, and before that Brittany and Kevin.'

'Brittany and Kevin? I haven't seen them all night.' Sonny resented her good fortune. Onepu continued. 'Have you seen them, Quinn?'

'No, Ms Onepu, not tonight. Um … there's some … uh … other place I have to be to … do something now.'

'That's a good idea!' said Onepu. 'You ask everybody to find out who saw Brittany and Kevin last and where they went.'

'Right!' said Quinn. 'I'll … go and get everybody talking about that.' She hurried off.

Onepu paused long enough for the man to speak.

'If they've taken that lifeboat, we have to find it! Do you know how much those things cost? I'll get the captain to put the ship on a search pattern.' He hurried off too.

'I thought that was the captain', Sonny said indifferently.

'No', said Onepu, 'that's the owner.'

'Oh.' Sonny looked in the direction the man had gone. 'I think my father might have been looking for him.' Then he collected himself. 'Ms Onepu, shouldn't you find Ms Li and tell her what's happening?' As she dithered, he added, 'I can stay here and keep a lookout on deck if need be.'

'Yes', Onepu said, 'that's a good plan. Thank you, Sonny! It's such a good thing that you're here!'

As soon as she'd gone Sonny took an executive decision that there _wasn't _a need to keep a lookout on deck, stretched himself out on his deck chair again, and lapsed straight back into a hypnogogic state. A few minutes later he was deep in a dream of Dr Moreau's island. There were near-humans there constructed by alteration of animals and yet strangely recognisable as Sonny's schoolmates: a mandrill-Kevin, a coyote-Upchuck, a panda-Andrea, a sloth-Tiffany, a Quinn somehow composed of gazelle and marmoset.

He was woken so abruptly that for a moment he imagined there were other humans on the island. But it was only his mother, asking whether he'd seen his father. Before Sonny could deny all knowledge, his father answered the question by appearing and the two of them started squabbling about something of no interest to Sonny. Sonny thought about shifting his chair to the other side of the deck, but didn't have the energy. He brought his hand to his face to massage the outside of his eye sockets.

'There he is!' cried Onepu, returning. 'The hero of the hour! Well done, Sonny! Thanks to you those children have been rescued! Mr and Mrs Morgendorffer, you should be very proud of your son. Thanks to his alertness, the alarm was raised in time, and Kevin Thompson and Brittany Taylor have been saved from an untimely watery grave!'

'I hope so much that I'm still asleep and this is only a nightmare', said Sonny under his breath.

'I shudder to think what might have happened had you not been here, Sonny. Mr and Mrs Morgendorffer, as a teacher I take very seriously the responsibilities we as a school assume for the welfare of your precious children. We must always think of the children! I must find Ms Li again so that I can tell her all is well and discuss with her what we can learn from this experience for the benefit of the children in the future.'

When Onepu was gone, Sonny's father asked him who she was.

'That's Ms Onepu', Sonny said. 'She was hired last year to fill the vacancy in the Science department left by Ms Barch's transfer.' _Speaking of what might have happened if I had not been around_, he thought.

His mother spoke up. 'Don't you remember anything, Jake? She was at that school paintballing trip!'

'Now wait a minute!' But before Sonny's parents could extend their quarrel on to new ground, a loud outburst from forward drowned them out.

'Hey there, Dee-Dee! What do you think you're playing at with him?'

Sonny recognised the voice of the ship's owner as both his parents swivelled their heads in that direction. The next moment Brittany and Kevin came up to him. Kevin looked as if he'd fallen in the water, and Brittany had been splashed as well.

'Sonny!' Brittany said. 'Ms Onepu told us that it's thanks to you that we were rescued!'

'Hey, babe', Kevin said. 'I was with you the whole time. You know you're always safe with me. We'd don't need any brains to look out for us.' He gave Sonny a contemptuous look.

Sonny could see his father preparing to take offence. He heaved himself regretfully from his chair to forestall that. 'I'm sure that in that crisis, Kevin displayed all those egregious personal qualities of the intellect that so mark him off from individuals such as myself. But hadn't we better go and find out what all that fuss is about?' He gestured in the direction of the sounds forward. The owner was clearly quarrelling with two other people: one was a woman with a brassy voice and the other could not be heard clearly but only inferred from the pattern of the exchange. 'Isn't that the owner shouting?' Sonny said. 'There might be something wrong. Could be a job for the QB.'

Sonny's parents, Kevin, and Brittany all trooped forward, with Sonny trailing behind as much as possible. The squabble resolved itself into the three figures of the owner, a woman presumably his wife, and—Mr O'Neill! Then, before Sonny could figure out just what had been going on, Onepu reappeared with Li in tow, fretting shrilly about the effect of this scene on impressionable young minds and about the school's responsibility.

Having seen that there was enough going on to occupy everybody's attention, Sonny slipped away back to his deckchair. He lay there grumbling for a while at the difficulty of getting back to sleep again, but eventually managed a fitful doze on which nobody intruded again until the ship finally returned to the dock.

By the time they disembarked Quinn had caught up on all the gossip and was breathlessly telling both her parents and Sonny the full story of how Kevin and Brittany had somehow managed to launch the lifeboat accidentally so that the ship had to turn round and rescue them. Then she went on to explain to them (regardless of the fact that they'd known most of it before she did) about how the owner had caught Mr O'Neill holding his wife by the waist in a re-enactment of the scene from _Titanic_, and about how the owner and his wife had had a blazing row about it. Sonny suspected that his parents were as relieved as he was when something distracted her after they reached the dock. She squealed 'Marco!' and darted away from them, towards a dark-haired man standing by a red sports car.

'Quinn!' exclaimed Helen. 'What do you think you're doing? Come on, Jake!' She hustled her husband with her to interfere in their daughter's life.

Sonny sank down on the dock, propping himself against one of the posts in the railing, but before he'd got properly settled his whole family returned to disturb him again. He stumbled groggily after them to the car. On the drive back he gathered hazily from Quinn's delighted babbling that Marco had mistaken the time and place for their date and had made her a deep apology. Apparently he wanted to take her out somewhere special to make it up to her, but Helen and Jake were reluctant to let her out with an older man unchaperoned. Sleep claimed Sonny before he found out any more. Later he had a vague recollection that they were still bickering as he staggered from the car to his bed.

The next day he went out with Jane for pizza. They rehashed the _Sick, Sad World _marathon. Casino Night was not discussed.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Just Add Water' by Peggy Nicoll<strong>_


	39. GreenEyed

**Not So Different**

_**39. Green-Eyed**_

Jane was smiling at a boy. She probably thought he was 'cute'. Come to that, for all Sonny knew he probably was 'cute'—it wasn't for Sonny to say, was it? In any case, Jane kept smiling at him. She was even doing something with her eyes—Sonny didn't want to call it 'batting', but what else could it be called?

'Hey', Sonny said to her. 'Hey!'

Jane turned her head back towards him and stopped smiling. 'Huh? Sorry.' She turned her head to look at the boy again. 'That guy keeps looking at me.' She started smiling again.

'Well, either he's mistaken me for a girl in the bad light in here or he's wondering whether he can cut me out. I'm going to the bathroom anyway, that'll give him his chance. Or both of you.'

'Hey, you don't have to ….'

'I don't have to go to the bathroom? Actually I do. So don't sweat it. I'm not making a special trip on your account. Feel free.'

Mystik Spiral were about to finish their first set, so Sonny figured he should answer nature's call before Trent came off stage. Sonny and Jane had come to ask him to help with a school assignment, to produce a multimedia project combining words, images, and sound. Sonny was going to write the script and Jane was going to create the images—and, Jane had suggested, they could get Trent to do some music for them.

Jane had revealed an ulterior motive for teaming with Sonny on this occasion: she needed something better than a C to get off academic probation and avoid the threat of taking the class over again and, as she had said, 'Sonny Morgendorffer does not get Cs'. Sonny couldn't help it: he always admired accuracy. (Of course when he had been obliged to take gym classes he had been _lucky _to get a C, but those days were fortunately past.) In this case, he had an ace in the hole which would guarantee their results. He planned a script about an innocent school student being interrogated by Federal immigration agents after a teacher with a grudge made a false allegation that the whole family were in the country illegally. O'Neill would know it was a veiled reference to Sonny's own recent experience, so they'd have him right where they wanted him.

By the time Sonny got back from the bathroom, the first set was definitely over, but Jane wasn't talking to Trent. She was talking with the boy with the green eyes and the long hair, and they were both smiling. A lot. He must have come over to her in Sonny's absence, which was more or less what Sonny had predicted. As Sonny came up, they seemed to be arranging to do something together—he caught the word 'food'.

Jane turned to him. 'Oh, hey, Sonny. This is, uh ….'

'Tom', said … Tom.

'Hi', said Sonny curtly.

'So, are you family support too?'

'Sorry?' Sonny said.

'Jane was just telling me that her brother's in the band. And you?'

'Oh, I see. Right', Sonny said, 'I'm not Jane's other brother, I'm not the brother of anybody else in the band, Jane and I are friends from school, I'm not her boyfriend, we're not dating, I don't do the whole dating thing, and is there anything else I can help you with?'

While Tom was taken flat aback, Jane interposed.

'Tom's car's falling apart, so we're going for a ride', she said, with her own special brand of logic. 'I'll be right back.'

'Hey. We're supposed to talk to Trent, remember?'

'You talk. I'll be back for the second set. Later.'

'Nice meeting you', Tom said implausibly before he and Jane breezed out. Sonny suspected they were smiling at each other again.

'Great', he said looking after them. He wondered idly whether Tom _had _initially mistaken him for a girl. Not that it mattered. Anyway, Trent came up to him at that point.

'Hey, Sonny. You guys wanted to talk to me about something?'

'Um … yeah. But Jane went out for some food.'

'That's okay. You're here.'

Sonny started to explain about the school assignment. Initially Trent thought that the idea was to make the project a documentary about Mystik Spiral, but once Sonny had set him straight, Trent still seemed eager—insofar as 'eager' was a description that _ever _applied to Trent. Then Trent asked after Jane. When Sonny told him what she'd said, Trent mentioned that the second set wouldn't be for another hour. Sonny was tired and didn't want to wait that long, so Trent offered him a ride home. On the drive, he asked Sonny why Jane had gone for food without him.

When Sonny explained about the 'Tom' she'd gone off with, Trent asked who he was, and Sonny said that they'd never seen him before. 'I don't know what made her think it would be all right to go for a ride with him.'

'You got to relax, Sonny. Just because you don't do the whole dating thing doesn't mean Janey doesn't, or shouldn't.'

Sonny remembered Trent saying something similar during their failed attempt to go to Alternapalooza. This wasn't about trying to stop Jane dating, though. When Jane and this Tom had been eyeing each other, he'd got out of the way to give them a chance, hadn't he? 'That's not the point. Doesn't it bother you that Jane's gone off with somebody she's only just met?'

'Janey can look after herself.'

'I hope so', said Sonny, as Trent pulled up in front of the Morgendorffer house. 'Anyway, thanks for the ride.' He got out of the car.

Before driving off, Trent suggested that maybe they could talk about the school project at his place the next day, if Sonny came over. Sonny agreed that maybe they could.

The next day, though, Sonny didn't at first feel like contacting any Lanes. He thought he'd wait until he heard from Jane. When he'd heard nothing and it was almost noon, he broke down and telephoned. Jane answered sounding as if she'd just got out of bed—but then Jane often sounded like that long after rising.

'Did I wake you?' Sonny said. 'I guess that means you haven't been murdered. Well, that's good.'

— '_Do you have any idea what time it is?'_

Sonny could hear that Jane knew perfectly well that he had the high ground and her attempt to wrong-foot him was only half-hearted. When he gave an unadorned factual answer to her question she fell back.

— '_I guess righteous indignation isn't really appropriate, then.'_

He pressed his advantage. 'Not on your part, no.'

He knew he had her, but she gave one more wriggle, challenging him for disappearing the previous night. He turned that one back on her easily and she gave up, apologising for ditching him, although she had come back for the second set.

'I thought we weren't staying for the second set', he said, and she repeated her apology before turning the conversation to the project. Sonny told her what Trent had said and Jane told him to come over at once.

'Only don't rush. He won't be up for another two hours.'

Sonny knew that Jane wasn't much better than Trent at waking up quickly, so he was happy to take his time and have some lunch before he headed over to the Lanes'. When Jane answered the door to his ring (with bed hair, he noticed) she still sounded a little defensive, and when he asked her about it she said, 'After you called, I got up, got dressed, and then fell back asleep. You did call, right? 'Cause I don't think I could have dreamed a conversation _that _nasty.'

Sonny wasn't going to disavow what he'd said to Jane earlier, but he also didn't need to repeat it, so he just asked after Trent. Jane said she'd heard movement in his room, but that might have been raccoons. She yawned and offered Sonny breakfast.

'Thanks, but I don't really like to eat breakfast after lunch. It spoils my dinner. So, you want to work on this multimedia thing?'

'I don't know, Sonny, I'm really beat.' Suddenly Jane's eyes widened in shock and she raised her voice. 'Hey! How you doing?'

Sonny could feel his face moving. Why was his face moving? What was Jane talking about?

'Hi', said a smooth voice from behind him. He looked round.

'Hi, Sonny', added Tom.

Sonny looked from one of them to the other and back again as Tom explained or excused his presence and Jane bantered easily with him. Then she invited Tom inside.

'No', said Tom, with a 'warding-off' gesture of the hand, 'you've got company', but Jane grabbed his wrist and pulled him inside. Sonny found himself stepping through the doorway just to avoid getting knocked over, and then it was left to him to shut the door.

Before the situation got any more awkward—or maybe _just_ to make it more awkward—Trent came downstairs at that point. Greetings and introductions were exchanged, and then Sonny tried to get back to the topic of the multimedia project. Trent invited Sonny into the kitchen to talk about it. Sonny suggested Jane should be in on the conversation.

'You go ahead', Jane said. 'I'm not quite up yet.' She turned to Tom. 'I'll walk Tom to his car.'

Sonny started to object, but Trent supported Jane, so Sonny discontentedly followed Trent into the kitchen, where he started making coffee. Sonny took a seat at the table. Hanging out with Trent was all right, but otherwise the world was off-kilter. When he tried to get the conversation onto the multimedia project, Trent pointed out that Jane wasn't there. Sonny pointed out that _he _had pointed out that issue first. Not at all to Sonny's surprise, but a little to his disappointment, Trent admitted that he'd only been trying to give Jane a moment with Tom.

Sonny said, 'Do you think it's weird that they just met last night and he's already inviting himself over?'

'I guess he likes her.'

Sonny chewed that over a little. He still didn't like the taste of it. Before the conversation could go anywhere else, the phone rang. The call was to remind Trent about an 'important' audition, and he rushed off.

Just before Trent left, he told Sonny to help himself to the hot water. Sonny got up and went over to the stove. He turned off the heat, saving one of the Lanes' saucepans from being completely burnt through when the water boiled dry. Then he looked around the room before trudging back to the table to collect his backpack.

When he came out of the kitchen, Jane was nowhere to be seen. When he looked outside, Tom's car had gone.

She must have walked him to his car, into his car, and off.

Sonny carefully pulled the door to behind him, hooked his arms through the straps of his backpack, and headed home.

* * *

><p>Sonny saw a lot less of Jane than usual in the week that followed, but eventually Jane got around to telling him that she finally had some sketches she liked, and that Trent had been working with a composing program. Sonny told her that the script had been finished since Monday. 'I had a lot of free time last weekend', he said.<p>

Jane apologised for not getting together with him.

'No big deal', said Sonny. 'How's Tom?'

'You really don't like him, do you?'

'This isn't about how I feel about Tom. How should I feel anything about him? I don't even know him. And neither do you. That's what I don't like.'

'I've gone out with him a few times. He's a pleasant young fellow.' Jane gave him a droll look. 'Are _you _trying to make rules about how well people should know each other before they go out together?'

Sonny shifted his eyes to the side, and his cheek twitched. 'I know', he said slowly. 'Trent told me. Again. Just because I don't do the whole dating thing doesn't mean you can't.'

'Wait a minute.' Jane raised an eyebrow. 'What do you mean, again?'

'He said much the same to me back when we made that trip that never reached Alternapalooza. On the way back, when you fell asleep in the van. You know how Trent is, he didn't come the heavy or anything, but I could figure out what he was getting at, both times.'

'Oh.' Jane pushed some hair out of her eyes. 'Anyway, Tom's seeing his friends tonight, so you and I will definitely get together.'

'Thanks for fitting me in.'

'I do what I can.'

_Back to normal_, Sonny thought. But he revised that view at their evening pizza meeting, when Tom appeared as they were deciding what to do when they finished eating. He greeted Jane, Jane greeted him, and Sonny gave him the prison yard stare and asked him what he was doing there.

'Those really good friends of mine—they totally blew me off. I figured you guys might be here.'

_You guys?_

Jane invited Tom to join them for more pizza, but he said he was only going to stay a minute. Sonny offered to lend him a stopwatch.

'Hey, Sonny', Tom said, 'if you want me to leave, just say so.'

Sonny turned away from Tom and back to his pizza, raising one hand in a gesture of dismissal as he said, 'Okay, bye now.'

Jane started to protest, so Sonny reminded her that they'd just agreed to see a movie.

Tom said, 'What movie?'

'It's called', said Sonny, '_The Movie About Totally Platonic Friendship That's Only Suitable For People Who Have Platonic Friendships But Spells Sudden Death For Any Sort Of Romantic Connection_. Maybe you should see it some other time if you can ever find those really good friends of yours again.'

'Hey, Sonny, did I say I wanted to go to the movie with you?'

'No, but you never mentioned wanting to horn in on our pizza time, either.'

'Sonny, you're so darn pleasant and friendly, I don't see how anybody could resist an evening with you. But just on a crazy whim, I think I'll go home and watch TV by myself.'

Jane called out to Tom as he left, but he didn't turn back. Then she turned on Sonny.

'What is it with you? You're not _acting _like somebody who accepts that I'm dating somebody else.'

Sonny's face went dead. 'It's not about _who _you're dating. It's about your being here now in the non-dating part of your life with me, not in the dating part of your life with Tom or anybody.' He stood up. 'Unless you've decided that the dating part of your life is so important you can dispense with the other part, and you'd rather go for another ride with Tom if he's available instead of spending the evening with me.'

'Sonny, don't you think you're overreacting?'

'If I weren't here, you'd be chasing after Tom right now, wouldn't you?'

'I don't know.'

'Then here's your chance to find out.' Sonny left his last slice of pizza behind and walked out into the night.

* * *

><p>Sonny went over to Jane's the next day. He had to. When Sonny Morgendorffer entered into commitments, he made good on them. He'd said he would do the multimedia assignment with Jane, and he knew she needed the grade to get off academic probation and avoid taking O'Neill's class over. And that meant they needed Trent to get the music done so that they could complete the assignment, which was due the next day.<p>

When he saw Jane, he explained all this to her carefully. It wasn't his grade that was in question, after all. She was prickly and sarcastic in response. So that hadn't changed. When she made a reference to the night before, he asked her if she wanted to tell him about her date with Tom.

'There was no date with Tom. There was nothing. He left, you left, I left. Big Saturday night.'

'And I suppose you think that's my fault?'

'The notion had crossed my mind.'

At that moment Trent came into the room. Jane turned her hostility on him. Sonny backed her up by explaining the issue in explicit terms. Trent didn't react well to hostility or, perhaps, to explicitness, and solved his own problem by leaving.

Sonny figured he'd done what he'd come for. He reminded Jane to keep on at Trent and left too. As he walked out the door he thought he heard Jane calling out to him—something about the fight they'd been having. He just closed the door behind him. Was that what they'd been doing, fighting? If they'd been fighting, he had no interest in fighting any more. His only reason for going over to Jane's had been the assignment, and he'd dealt with that issue as much as he could. When Sonny Morgendorffer entered into commitments, he made good on them, that was all.

He was still trying to get the taste of the whole experience out of his mouth as he walked home. Instead he got a car pulling up next to him, driven by Tom, who leaned out the window and addressed him.

'Hey, Sonny.'

'Excuse me', Sonny said. 'I have an elsewhere to be.' He kept walking.

Tom drove along beside him. 'I could give you a lift there.'

'You want to put me in the death seat of that thing?' Tom's car looked like it was on the lam from the wreckers. 'I'm walking, thanks.'

Tom stopped his car and hopped out. 'I'll walk with you for a bit.'

'What are you doing?'

'Look, I'd like to talk to you, okay?'

Sonny stopped and turned to face Tom directly.

'You seem moderately intelligent, so I'd be interested in your estimate of the probability that the conversation on which we've now embarked is the daily express service to that ever-popular destination "Sonny Morgendorffer gets beaten up again".'

'_What?_ No! Is that what's eating you, you think I'd beat you up because … I don't know, because somehow there's some kind of twisted connection between that and my being interested in Jane? I don't beat up anybody!'

One corner of Sonny's mouth twitched.

'I didn't say that you would, did I? I asked for your objective opinion, as a contribution to a continuing research project, in a spirit of scientific curiosity.'

Sonny paused to catch his breath, and Tom waited.

'Let's look at some of the evidence, shall we? The last person who was interested in getting to know Jane beat me up, but we have to allow for the possibility that that was a coincidence. I've also been beaten up by somebody who'd just finished explaining that he didn't want to get to know Jane. For that matter, I got beaten up even more regularly before I ever met Jane. Reasons for wanting to beat up Sonny Morgendorffer, my research suggests, are not a commodity in short supply. Don't flatter yourself that I'm singling you out as something special. That's precisely my point. I don't know you, I don't need to know you, I don't want to know you.'

'Well, that doesn't change _my_ point', said Tom. 'What I'm hoping is that Jane will want to get to know me, because I really like her and I want to get to know her. So far one of the biggest things I know about her is that she's the person who has you as her best friend. All she talks about is what Sonny said and what Sonny did.'

'So? That's a reason for you to be interested in me, not a reason for me to be interested in you. More information about you is of no value to me. Further in the spirit of scientific curiosity, would you care to estimate how many friends I've had in my life apart from Jane?'

Tom shrugged. 'That depends on whether the way you talk to me is a representative sample. It doesn't sound like the way to make friends, and yet you did make friends with Jane somehow, so I think I have inadequate data for a conclusion.'

'Fair enough.' Sonny extended his left hand, fingers spread, and gestured at it with the other. 'I can number all the friends I've had in my life on one thumb. I survived to the age of sixteen despite the absence, and then I met Jane and filled the vacancy. Thank you very much for your interest, but we are interviewing no further applicants at this time. Date Jane, don't date Jane, beat me up, don't beat me up, but don't look for a dialogue with me.'

Tom's tongue moved against his teeth. 'What if I'm not looking for a dialogue with Sonny Morgendorffer, but I am looking for a dialogue with the best friend of Jane Lane, the most important person in her life?'

Sonny's nostrils widened. 'Interesting. I knew you weren't as stupid as I look. Okay, go on.'

'I know a little about how her friendship with you affects her, but how does it affect you? If the two of you are friends, doesn't that mean you don't want to see her hurt?'

Tom paused, but Sonny's face didn't move. 'I said, go on.'

'As soon as I found out you weren't Jane's other brother, I found out that you weren't her boyfriend either, but her friend. Her best friend. You're not dating her. You're not dating anybody, not for the time being. That suits you. But close as you and Jane are, you're not two halves of one whole. It suits you not to date, but that doesn't mean it suits her not to date. That other guy you mentioned, the one who was interested in her and who beat you up, obviously she wouldn't have been interested in anybody who beat up Sonny Morgendorffer, but do you think there's a chance she could have been interested before he beat you up? What does your scientific research tell you about that?'

Sonny shrugged. 'A chance, sure. So what are you telling me? That I shouldn't stand in the way of Jane's chance for true love? I already know that, thanks. I'm not standing in the way of anything. I told you, date her or don't, and I'd tell her the same if she asked.'

'That's not my point. I'm not asking Jane Lane's best friend not to hurt her by stopping her from dating me. I'm asking Jane Lane's best friend not to hurt her by open negativity towards somebody she may be interested in. And don't tell me again that you don't hate me, you know as well as I do that that's not the point either.'

Sonny didn't hesitate. 'You're good. Okay. Civility. Even geniality. But minimal contact. Deal?'

'Deal.' Tom nodded without moving his hands from his belt and turned to walk back to his car.

'I'm still never riding in that thing', Sonny said.

'Well, that's just common sense', was Tom's parting shot.

* * *

><p>On Monday morning, Jane arrived at Sonny's house before school with the multimedia report—without the music. Jane apologised for ever suggesting involving Trent. Sonny told her to forget about it.<p>

Jane said, 'You're not mad?'

'I have no reason to be mad at you.'

'Does this mean we can be in the same room for a while?'

'Don't push it.'

Fortunately, the absence of Trent's music did not prevent them from getting a satisfactory grade from O'Neill, and Jane's future was saved.

Trent himself showed up unexpectedly at Sonny's house. He wanted to talk to Sonny, and invited him out for pizza. It turned out that he felt bad about what had happened, and wanted to explain. His explanation was this: 'I just couldn't get the music together.'

That was all.

When Sonny prodded him a little about the way he'd behaved, he said further that he still thought he'd get inspired eventually. Sonny tried to explain to Trent about deadlines, but they found they just had different views.

'It's too bad, Sonny', said Trent. 'I always kind of felt you understood the way I think.'

'I do, Trent. I do.'

At just that moment, Jane and Tom came up to them. It wasn't a planned encounter. They must just have come into the same place for pizza. That sort of thing happened.

'Trent, I don't care if he forgives you', Jane said. '_I'm _never speaking to you again.'

Trent said, 'You just did.'

'Damn!' She turned to Sonny. 'So did he give you a plausible reason for screwing up our project?'

'From his point of view.'

'That's better than nothing … I think', said Jane. Then she asked Tom to buy her some pizza, and they went off.

Trent saw Sonny watching them go and said, 'So what do you think of him now?'

Sonny shrugged. 'What I think of Tom isn't the point. You were the one who told me that Jane can look after herself. She can make up her own mind about Tom.'

'Well, if you can be relaxed about it, that's good.' Trent stood up and excused himself, saying that he was late for a rehearsal.

'How do you know?' said Sonny. 'You don't wear a watch.'

'I'm always late. That's why I don't wear a watch. They depress me.'

'You know, Trent, somehow that makes perfect sense.'

Trent apologised again for what had happened and they farewelled each other. Sonny watched Trent out the door and then noticed that Jane and Tom had seated themselves in another booth and that Jane was waving him over.

_More relaxed about things_, he thought, and went over to join them. _After all, if he's buying pizza, I might as well eat a slice if I get the chance._

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Jane's Addition' by Glenn Eichler<strong>  
><em>


	40. Can't Win, Break Even, Quit The Game

**Not So Different**

_**40. Can't Win, Can't Break Even, Can't Quit The Game**_

_I really am trying not to be negative about Jane's boyfriend_, Sonny said to himself. He told himself that it wasn't Tom who was bothering him, it was Jane. He even found himself sympathising with Tom. Tom had complained—no, he hadn't _complained_, being fair, he'd just observed—that Jane seemed to talk all the time about things Sonny had done and said. It seemed to Sonny now that Jane was talking all the time about things Tom had done and said, and when it bothered him he figured the reverse must bother Tom. Right now Jane was talking about how Tom had dealt with somebody who'd been a nuisance in a movie theatre, but since his solution had involved buying their way out of the situation, Sonny wasn't impressed. He knew that Jane had more impressive stories than that to tell Tom about Sonny's own techniques.

In fact, his problem was the same one he'd had originally, and it didn't involve reflections on Tom. It had bothered him when he knew nothing about Tom that Jane was so impressed with him when _she _didn't know Tom, and now that she had got to know him—a bit—she was still far more impressed with him than was warranted. It was like listening to Brittany Taylor talk about how smart Kevin Thompson was. Well, in principle. Not to the same degree. Strive to be fair. But before Tom Jane would have understood the principle. He remembered her sharing the joke with him about Brittany presumably being prepared to credit Kevin for the rainbow on the day of the big rainstorm. But when he made a sarcastic remark this time, she said, 'Oh, come on, you have to admit that young Thomas is a clever fellow.'

_Young Thomas? _Was that how Tom talked, and was that his influence rubbing off on Jane? Sonny was taking issue with Jane about this when his sarcasm was interrupted by the devil they spoke of, sounding the horn of his car as he pulled up alongside them.

When they turned in his direction he gave them a greeting or rather, carefully, a greeting each: a 'Yo' for Jane and a 'Hey, Sonny' for Sonny. Jane returned his 'Yo'.

'Why, young Thomas', Sonny said carefully, 'how nice to see you.'

Tom offered them both a ride home. Had he forgotten that Sonny had told him he'd never ride in that car, and that he himself had called that 'common sense'? It still looked like common sense to Sonny, and besides, he was only two doors from home. He declined, civilly.

Jane hopped into the car, and after farewells all round it drove off.

Sonny sighed.

* * *

><p>Jane gave an evasive answer when Sonny asked her, the next day at school, what she'd done the night before. Why did she bother? She must know that he knew she'd been out with Tom, and when he pressed her she admitted it.<p>

'You know', he said, 'you don't have to tiptoe around me like I'm some sort of hysterical nutjob.'

'There are many words I could use to describe you', Jane replied. 'Hysterical is not among them.'

Sonny never knew where that conversation might have gone next, because as they walked along the hallway they came close—not too close—to Brittany and Kevin in the middle of one of their inane disagreements. Kevin's position was based on what he thought was science: men having greater intelligence than women because of greater muscle mass in their heads. It must have taken a lot of muscle mass in his head to come up with that one. Brittany was not persuaded: she still thought what she thought before, that she was as good a thinker as Kevin, maybe even a better one, no matter what Kevin thought. They left in opposite directions but both at the same height of dudgeon, characteristically but fortunately paying no attention to Sonny or Jane.

When they'd gone, Jane said, 'They're fighting over who's smarter?'

'If they do battle with their wits, neither one is in any danger, except of self-inflicted injury.'

In a bygone time Jane would have joined in Sonny's sarcasm, but instead she said something which sounded to Sonny like a great big hint. 'I don't know. You gotta give Brittany credit for not feeling like she has to conform to his image of her.'

Where was the Jane Sonny used to know? Was this whole Tom thing affecting her so much that she'd stoop to make a point about it by comparing herself and Sonny with Kevin and Brittany? When he asked her this question, she frowned and said, 'There's, like, sixteen possible combinations there, and not a single one of them works.'

Sonny hoped she was genuine about not getting the point, but he spelled it out to be sure. 'Kevin should accept Brittany saying she's smart, and I should accept you and this whole Tom-worship.'

Jane frowned harder and her voice rose. 'Sonny, you're making a big leap here, and I don't worship'—she stressed the word ironically with a 'scare quotes' gesture—'Tom or anyone else. Get over it.'

'I am', Sonny said, and left her standing there.

But they were unavoidably back together, or at least at adjoining desks, in economics class. Mrs Bennett was assigning the class a 'real-life economics' project, but without the real-life financial commitments. They weren't to rent an apartment, or whatever it might be, for real, but they had to pick from a list of suitable activities and go through as much of the process as possible. With a partner.

'Excuse me.' Sonny interrupted to ask about working alone.

'I'd really rather have you work with somebody, Sonny. In the real world', said Bennett, with the terminally married person's obliviousness to the divorce statistics, 'we rarely make financial decisions without having to consider somebody else's needs and wishes.'

'Lousy real world', said Sonny, with a quick sidelong look at Jane. She was already looking at him. She'd noticed his question.

She followed up on it later, as they walked out of the building, double-checking on whether he really wanted to do the project alone.

'Kind of', he said, in answer to her question. 'I kind of said that to tick you off.'

'It worked.'

Their exchange was interrupted by the approach of Jodie Landon. She asked them whether they were planning on partnering for the economics project.

Had she also noticed the question Sonny had asked in class? Had she guessed that they might not be working as a team? When they both confirmed as much, she said 'Really?' Was she genuinely surprised? Or was she just finding it—from her point of view—too good to be true? After all, what difference did it make to her if Sonny and Jane were suspending their partnership? Her only possible reason for asking was that _she _might want to team up with one of them, and that could only mean—

'Aren't you working with young Mack?' asked Jane.

_What's that? _thought Sonny. _Is everybody 'young' now? Or just every boyfriend?_

'I don't know—he's kind of bad with money', Jodie said. 'Like, he's been overdrawn on his allowance for a while now.'

Sonny said, 'How long?'

'Since third grade.'

Sonny could see the issue from Jodie's point of view. Jodie would want to put everything into this project, like all her projects, and that would include putting in a partner with the maximum possible contribution to make. If Sonny had been in Jodie's position he would have taken the same approach he took when Ms Barch had assigned him to work with Brittany Taylor on a lab project back in tenth grade. He'd done all the work himself and expected less than nothing from Brittany—an expectation she had fulfilled, he recalled with the ghost of a wince. But Jodie wasn't built that way. Now that he thought of it, neither was Mack, as Sonny had remarked to Jane on that very occasion.

_If _Jodie were looking for a partner who'd contribute to getting a good grade on the project, she'd be looking for somebody who got good grades, presumably Sonny himself rather than Jane. Sonny himself, on the other hand, normally partnered with Jane when they could because their attitudes were comfortably similar, and anyway it spared Sonny from having to accommodate somebody else intruding in his life.

All this had flashed through Sonny's mind in the few moments the conversation with Jodie had taken, but even at the speed Sonny calculated he had gone no further when another factor was added to the situation. Kevin approached Brittany, within earshot (at least, within earshot for the volume those two spoke at), to talk to her about the economics project. Once again Sonny noted the fine distinctions in calibre that could exist even among fundamentally stupid people. Despite the way they'd blown up at each other, Kevin still couldn't imagine any arrangement for a team assignment that didn't involve himself and Brittany working together. Brittany, on the other hand, could not only imagine it but determine on it, and start scanning the environment for another potential partner.

Sonny was impressed to see that Jodie calculated what that would mean as quickly as he did himself. Obviously Brittany would ask Jodie because she was a good student, pleasant to everybody, and, most importantly, right there on the spot, which meant that Brittany could use her for an immediate demonstration to Kevin that _she_ could easily find herself a partner.

So Jodie immediately asked Sonny to work with her on the project.

As Sonny calculated further, he turned a questioning look on Jane. Sure, they'd both just told Jodie that they might not be working together, but they didn't have to mean it. But Jane told him not to do her any favours.

Sonny knew that Jodie was looking for a partner right now because she wanted an excuse to turn down the imminent request from Brittany. Typically, she didn't want to give a flat refusal, which is what Sonny would have done if Brittany had asked him and he didn't want to accept. Actually, working with Brittany, intrinsically, was no worse than anybody else he might wind up partnered with—in fact, he knew from working 'with' Brittany on the conditioning project in Barch's old class that she could easily be steered out of the way to leave him a clear run at doing it himself, almost as if he were working alone. It wasn't the working-'with'-Brittany part that bothered him: it was the part where Brittany _asked_ him to be her partner, particularly if that happened right here in front of Kevin, and just refusing her wasn't a sufficient solution to that problem. And if he turned Jodie down, she'd ask somebody else as quickly as possible for the same reason that she was asking Sonny, and that somebody would have to be Jane because Jodie would find Kevin an even less desirable partner than Brittany. And if Jane accepted Jodie's offer—and why shouldn't she?—that would give Jodie the excuse she wanted for turning Brittany down, and then Brittany almost certainly would ask him, because she knew him as a brain, and because she had worked with him on a school assignment before, and, most importantly, because he was right there on the spot. In front of Kevin.

He'd figured all this out in the time it took to look towards Jane, get her response, and turn back towards Jodie.

'Sure', he said to Jodie. 'Why not?'

The next moment, as both he and Jodie had foreseen, Brittany came up and asked Jodie to be her partner. Jodie apologised with every appearance of sincerity—actually, too much appearance of sincerity for the discerning observer that Brittany wasn't—on the grounds that she'd 'promised' to work with Sonny.

So Brittany turned to Jane instead.

'You want to do a class project with me?' Jane said.

'Well, not really, but I mean, you're right here and all.' Sonny had picked the decisive factor correctly.

Jane said, 'Oh, Brittany, you sweet-talker, you', and the two of them went off together.

Sonny watched them go. Jane could have said no to Brittany. There were plenty of other people in the class she could have partnered with. Mack, for example. Was she just taking the easy option of the first person to ask? That would be like Jane. Or was she going off with Brittany to show him that she was ticked off with him? He had tried to tick her off and it had worked. He felt his shoulders slump.

'I hate everybody', he said, before turning back to Jodie. They might as well get started on the project.

Back at Sonny's place they got started only as far as deciding which activity they'd work on: applying for a small-business loan, Jodie's choice because she was thinking of starting her own business after college (Sonny's only contribution so far having been the negative one of rejecting some choices). They didn't get any further because they kept being disturbed by self-absorbed Morgendorffers walking through the room talking in raised voices on the telephone. Jodie, less inured than Sonny, got fed up with it and suggested that they take a break and get some pizza. Sonny wasn't going to say no to pizza.

* * *

><p>Jane had decided that working with Brittany on the economics project might go down more easily with pizza, on the general principle that things go down more easily with pizza. They were sitting in a booth with a slice each and had just agreed on shopping for a car as their activity for the assignment, when Mack and Kevin came in, and then over to their table.<p>

Mack and Jane exchanged casual greetings; Kevin and Brittany stiffly formal ones.

'My partner and I were just discussing our class project for economics', Kevin said.

_Poor Mack_, Jane thought.

'What an amusing coincidence. So were my partner and I', said Brittany. '_We're _going to purchase an automobile.'

'A coincidence, indeed, for we're going to purchase an automobile, too … as well.'

Jane was wondering how long they could keep up the act.

'Well, I suppose we'll see who uses their superior intelligence to get the better deal', and Brittany folded her arms, 'will we not?'

Jane was thinking how it was funnier watching this kind of thing when she did it with Sonny, when Sonny and Jodie came in and joined Mack and Kevin next to the table. This time the greetings had not even gone all the way round the ring of six before Jodie and Mack had slipped away together.

'Well, that's nice', Brittany said to Kevin, 'a boyfriend and a girlfriend getting a slice together out of mutual respect. I would ask you to sit down but, as you can see, I'm here with my friend Jane, who respects my intelligence.'

Jane could see Sonny looking sideways at her. She couldn't let Brittany's remark pass without comment. 'She's embellishing a little', she said, trying to give Sonny an ironical look. He just blinked.

Meanwhile Kevin was still trying ineptly to stand on his hoity-toity dignity, saying, 'Well, I don't need to sit with you because I'll just sit with …' before collapsing into panic. 'Hey, Mack!' he shouted, and ran off after his partner.

Jane was never the hoity-toity type. She asked Sonny to join them. A sunnily smiling Brittany didn't object, but Sonny turned Jane down and left.

Jane watched him out the door but he didn't look back.

* * *

><p>When Sonny got home he went straight to the solitude of his room, but it was disturbed only a few minutes later by a knocking at the door.<p>

'Hey, Sonny', his father said when Sonny opened to him. 'That was Jodie Landon you were talking with downstairs earlier, wasn't it?' He seemed to be proud of remembering Jodie's identity.

'Not by choice', Sonny said. 'We're assigned to work together on a school project.'

'But she is the same girl that we gave a lift to on that trip to Grove Hills, right?'

Sonny shrugged and confirmed this.

'I knew I recognised her!' Jake said. 'So she's an outstanding student, right! And you can expect an excellent grade for the project?'

'Aren't my grades already excellent enough for you, Dad?'

Jake's cheer faded away. 'Um … is this a trick question?'

Sonny shrugged again and his father went on.

'All I meant was that this wouldn't be like the time in ninth grade when you were partnered with that blonde girl?'

'Ninth grade was before we moved here, Dad. You must be thinking of tenth grade and Brittany Taylor.'

'The cheerleader, right?'

Sonny nodded and his father continued.

'I just thought that maybe being a cheerleader you didn't find her to be in your class intellectually, because you never seemed to spend any more time with her after that. But Jodie's different.'

Sonny gave a tiny sigh before responding. 'Brittany was dating the quarterback and she still is. And Jodie's still dating the football captain. And I'm still not dating anybody. I'm just working with Jodie on this one school project.'

'You mean the teacher assigned you as a pair, the way the teacher did with you and Brittany.' Sonny was surprised that his father remembered.

'Um … not exactly', Sonny said, feeling uncharacteristically wrong-footed. 'Well, not at all, to be honest. The teacher let us choose our own pairs, but she wouldn't let us work solo, so I figured I might as well say yes when Jodie asked me.'

'Well, good luck with the project!' said Jake. 'Not that you need good luck to get good grades, do you, ace? What do you have to do for the project anyway?'

'We have to take a business plan into a bank and see whether they'd be prepared to give us a loan for it.'

'A business plan! If you want to get some advice, I'd always be happy. Might as well take advantage of your dad's experience, hey?'

Sonny thought quickly. When Jodie had come over here, the idea had been to work on the project together. She'd been the one to suggest they break for pizza. And then she'd gone off with Mack without another word to him about getting together again or anything else to do with the project—or anything else at all. So he had no _direct _evidence to go on. Jodie would definitely be expecting to collaborate, she wouldn't be planning on just leaving him out the way he himself had done with Brittany (so long ago now, that project seemed), but she'd be working hard in any case—probably she'd come to him with an outline or a draft or something and then look for his input. Come to think of it, she would be likely to do what he would never—seek paternal input. It made sense in a way—Andrew Landon was a big success, so he might know something. Jodie would surely assume so.

Probably not a good idea to mention Andrew Landon to his own father, though.

Before the pause to think all this through had got long enough for it to strike his father, Sonny said, 'I'm expecting Jodie to do the first part and then I'll take a look at her ideas and we'll go on from there.' After another moment it occurred to him to tack on thanks for the offer.

'Just remember that it's always open for my boy!' his father said before leaving Sonny to brood.

* * *

><p>After ditching Sonny at the pizza parlour, Jodie had indeed found time to prepare a draft business plan for 'Millennium Project Enterprises', just as Sonny had guessed. When she'd showed it to him he'd looked it over and got her to agree to some changes, and they'd briefly discussed how they'd present it to the bank. Now Jodie was winding up her pitch to the loans officer, explaining that they wanted 'to empower young people to make their own investment decisions, so that investing becomes as natural to them as, say, going out for a fast-food hamburger'.<p>

Sonny hadn't opened his mouth yet, but now he felt the impulse. 'Because we all know how natural those hamburgers are.'

The loans officer looked at Sonny and asked him what role he'd be playing in the company.

Sonny didn't like people looking at him. 'Public relations officer', he lied, without missing a beat.

'Sonny is the inside person', Jodie lied. 'I'm the outside person.'

The loans officer praised that decision and then praised Jodie's idea and her presentation in a way that gave Sonny a clear image of a gigantic 'BUT' hanging in the air over his desk. Besides, he kept looking backward and forward between the two of them. Sonny still didn't like people looking at him. A lot of bad things in his life had happened after people had been looking at him.

The gigantic 'BUT' turned out to be that without business experience the bank would consider them 'high-risk' applicants, and probably wouldn't give them a loan unless, the loans officer suggested, Sonny's father was prepared to be a co-signatory.

He looked at Sonny again as he said this.

'_My _father? My _father_?' said Sonny. 'My father is … well, what about my mother? Couldn't she co-sign a loan? My father's already had one heart attack, but my mother is—my mother is a senior associate with Vitale, Davis, Horowitz, Riordan, Schrecter, Schrecter, and Schrecter, and I've just realised that I've never asked her whether her firm handles sex discrimination lawsuits. Or', he continued, looking at Jodie, 'racial discrimination lawsuits. Anyway, what do you think, Jodie?'

The loans officer was temporarily speechless, but he was obviously relieved to look back at Jodie. Sonny liked it better when the man wasn't looking at him, too.

'Do you think I should try asking _my _father to co-sign a loan?' said Jodie. 'After all, he helped me put together this business plan.'

The loans officer took another look at the business plan. 'Wait a moment. Is your father _Andrew_ Landon? The folding coffee cup inventor?'

Jodie confirmed it, and suddenly the loans officer was babbling about 'business savvy in the blood' and suggesting that if they talked with his boss they might be able to work something out. But Jodie had had enough.

'Why?' she said. 'You don't give loans to high-risk applicants, unless maybe you're hoping you'll get a little business from their fathers.' As she rose from her seat, the loans officer tried to calm her down, but she stormed on. 'My father's the same high-risk colour that I am, you know.'

The loans officer watched helplessly as Jodie left. Sonny figured there was no point in his staying by himself, so he stood up as well. He had time for one more smart remark before he left.

'Well, I guess that makes me the outside person.'

He didn't have time for anything more because he had to hustle to catch up with Jodie. She was moving at the high velocity of the justifiably outraged. Why did Sonny always find himself having to keep up with speedy girls?

Jodie was still ranting about the way the loans officer had behaved. He'd liked _her _business plan (although hadn't she just admitted that it was partly her father's business plan?) and heard _her _answer the questions, but it was Sonny's father he wanted to co-sign the loan, just because of colour.

'At least you called him on it', Sonny said.

'Um … I guess you did that first, didn't you? Thanks for what you said back there.'

'Remember what we talked about that time we went to Grove Hills? You know why I don't like seeing people get picked on. At least you can tell yourself that he was knocking you back on your colour and maybe your sex. I alienated him on personality alone.'

Jodie was silent while she digested that. Then she began again, 'You know, Sonny …', before her words stumbled to an awkward halt.

Sonny nodded at her. 'You might as well go on.'

'Well, I was thinking—if we actually want to get that loan, it might help if you could bring yourself to adjust your attitude a little.'

It seemed simple to Sonny. 'But we don't actually want to get the loan.'

'That's the assignment, though.'

Sonny looked closely at Jodie and shook his head. 'I know you want to start your own business after college. But that's after college, right? Haven't you got enough on your plate now, extracurriculars and all, without trying to start up a business while you're still in the eleventh grade? So what would you actually want to get the loan for? Isn't the assignment', and he tipped his head back and half-closed his eyes as he quoted, 'to go through as much of the process as we can and report back on our experiences?'

'Well, _I_ don't want to report back that we couldn't get the loan.'

Sonny looked at her again. She really didn't see that it didn't matter. 'So you want to go into another bank and have them tell us again that banks don't give loans to high-school students? Or do you have a new plan?'

'All I want is to be judged on my own merits.'

'And you want me to adjust my attitude so that you don't get judged on my merits.'

Jodie stopped walking. 'Listen, Sonny, we've got an assignment and you agreed to be my partner. If you don't want to do this …'

'That's not it', Sonny said. 'I said I'd do it with you and I make good on my commitments. It's just ….' For a moment he wasn't sure how to finish the sentence, and then he resumed. 'Now that I think about it, I do have something of my own to contribute here.' He squared his shoulders. 'Let's get this done.' Jodie looked at him queerly and he felt foolish, but he just started walking again and gestured for her to do the same.

It didn't take them long to get to the next bank, and this time Jodie's reply to the loans officer's first question was to tell him that they'd prepared 'a comprehensive business plan with the help of my father, Andrew Landon'.

'Oh!' said the loans officer. 'The folding coffee cup guy?'

Sonny said nothing. Absolutely nothing.

He wondered whether Jodie noticed.

As she charmed the man (and Sonny did mean 'the man') into offering them a start-up loan and a line of credit, and as she let him down gently with the explanation about it's all being just a school project, and as he told them (or just Jodie—'you' could be either plural or singular) to be sure to come to him if 'you' ever did start up a real business, Sonny continued to say absolutely nothing. And to wonder whether Jodie noticed.

At home, his father asked him how the assignment had gone.

Sonny bit off the words, 'We got approved for the loan.'

'That's great!' his father said. 'So when are you two going into business? If you're a success, do you think you might need an experienced marketing consultant?' Sonny couldn't tell how serious he might be. His father worried him sometimes.

'We're not actually going into business, Dad. It was a hypothetical business for the project. Jodie'll be around later so we can finish off the report for class and that'll be the finish of it.'

When Jodie arrived at the Morgendorffers', Jake was there to open the door, welcoming her and saying what a pleasure it was to see her again. Then he left her with Sonny in the living room, 'to their work'.

Sonny resumed his silence as Jodie read him her draft, still wondering whether she noticed. When she asked him what he thought, he just shrugged. Admittedly, it was a big shrug by his usual standards.

Jodie put her papers down and looked at Sonny. 'Is something wrong?' she said.

'I don't think so', Sonny replied. 'Don't you think you're going to get an "A" for your work? It sounds like it to me.'

'I'm pretty happy with it. But you don't look as if you are.'

Sonny looked straight at her. 'Do I look any different from the way I normally look?'

'Well, no. But you haven't been saying anything.'

'Did you want me to say something? I don't know whether you noticed it, but I said nothing at all at that second bank, and you seem pretty happy with how that worked out. You got the loan, which is what you wanted. So I can't see any reason why you should be unhappy with my performance as your partner on this assignment. You asked me, you know, I didn't ask you. And you asked me to adjust my attitude, even though you seemed to be okay with my giving a smart answer at the first bank, but I haven't asked you to adjust yours.'

Jodie frowned. 'Are you suggesting that there's something wrong with my attitude?'

'I think it could be argued that there's an inconsistency between your attitude at the first bank and your attitude at the second one.'

Jodie picked up her papers again and shifted in her seat, moving slightly away from Sonny but turning a little towards him. 'All right, why don't you tell me exactly how you see the whole thing?'

'Why don't I tell you? Are you sure you want to hear? Remember, you knew what I was like before you asked me to be your partner.'

Jodie sat up a little straighter, moving herself another fraction further away. 'Just go on.'

'You asked me to be your partner because I'm the best student in the class and in the whole grade, or at any rate equal best with you, despite what you know about the different ways we get our grades, which I pointed out to you when we were at Grove Hills. So you ended up doing a lot of work on this project, because that's the way you always handle things, and I didn't have much input.'

Jodie was clearly angry now. 'You could have done more work if you wanted to. The suggestions you did make were good. I don't see where you get off criticising me because you were coasting.'

Sonny was unfazed. 'Who said I was criticising? I don't mind coasting when I can, as I told you at Grove Hills. The fact remains that I didn't make as big a contribution as your father did.' He paused for a moment. 'Well, did I?'

'Now that you mention it, I guess not. So? If you remember what _I_ told _you_ at Grove Hills, your negative attitude isn't helping now. Why don't you just get to the point?'

Sonny nodded. 'After the first bank, you were saying that you wanted to be judged on your merits. But at both banks you wanted to be judged on the merits of a proposal and a presentation which had been significantly contributed to by your father. Most students doing this project don't have a father with successful experience in business to help them with it. And at the first bank you said you were angry because the loans officer was only interested when he knew who your father was, and then at the second one you made sure the loans officer knew who your father was from the beginning. So you don't seem to have a consistent position on whether the identity of your father is a part of the merits on which you want to be judged, and you don't seem to have had a consistent position on how badly you wanted the loan approval and what price you were prepared to pay to get it.'

Jodie's voice rose. 'You've already made your point about how you didn't agree with me that the point of the assignment was to get the loan. But tell me again what it _is _supposed to be about?'

Sonny tipped back his head and half-closed his eyes as he quoted again: 'To go through as much of the process as we can and report back on our experiences.'

'Yes', said Jodie, 'the process of a real-life economic activity, the sort of activity that adults really deal with. Going through that as much as possible means approaching it as much like an adult as possible. Even if we weren't actually going to get a loan, we were still supposed to approach getting a loan the way adults do in the real world. So maybe', and her voice rose again, 'I was wrong to thank you for what you said at the first bank. Maybe we were unfair to that first loans officer. Maybe we both reacted the wrong way. Maybe that's what we learned, that if you're an adult in the world of adult business, the smart thing to do is to use whatever resources will get you whatever it is you're going after, such as maybe the power of a name like my father's, even if that means accepting a little blurring of the issues and deviating from _some people's_', and she jabbed a finger at Sonny, 'cut-and-dried views on consistency and what's right. Do you suppose that sitting around making your kind of sarcastic negative remarks is the process people go through in the real world of economics? It may be what works for you now, but do you think it's the way to get things done in the real world?'

Sonny shifted forward in his seat. 'It's not the Dale Carnegie way, but then I'm not the Dale Carnegie type, am I? I'm the type that people don't want to hear, the type that people want not to exist. I gave that loans officer in the second bank the opportunity to ignore Sonny Morgendorffer. That was how I adjusted my attitude, that was the contribution I made, and I think I played my part. I bet that is how a lot of partners and couples do it in the real world. "You talk to the people at the bank, you're so much better at it than I am." '

Jodie gathered her papers, stood up, and picked up her backpack. 'All right then, Sonny. If that's the way you want it. I guess you're right about my having done most of the work on our business plan—well, me and my father—and I guess I've already done most of the work for our report to the class, too, and your part can be being silent again if that's what you want. But I've got another question for you. You haven't been happy about adjusting to being my partner, with me approaching this the way I do. But if you really wanted to approach this whole exercise your way, you could have done that with a different partner. If you're so committed to your own consistency, why aren't you working with Jane? What's your problem with her? Isn't anybody good enough for you?'

Sonny didn't react. He heard Jodie walk to the door. On the way, he heard her saying goodbye to his parents. He turned his head and saw them both standing at the foot of the stairs and wondered how much they'd heard. They said goodbye to Jodie as she opened the door, and as she shut it behind her he saw them turn and walk out of the room. Then he slumped back into the cushions.

'You nailed me', he said aloud.

* * *

><p>Sonny finished dinner quickly and retreated to his room to brood, but was interrupted far too quickly by a knock on the door. When his father accepted his grudging invitation to come in, Sonny said at once, 'No, I don't want to talk about it.'<p>

'Talk about what?'

'Whatever it is you came in to have a heart-to-heart about.'

'I just came to see whether you wanted a cup of coffee. You left the table before I could offer you one.'

'Oh. No thanks, Dad.'

'All right, then. I guess you've still got that school project to think about, so I'll leave you to it.'

Jake started to leave the room, but before he was out the door, Sonny said, 'Don't I seem inordinately unhappy to you?'

'Inordinately?'

Sonny wasn't sure whether his father was questioning his application of the word or just completely ignorant of its existence. He asked a different question.

'Do you think I'm a rigid, unrealistic, unforgiving, self-righteous jerk who can't hold on to a friend?'

'Did somebody say that to you? Don't listen to them! You're my boy and you're great!' After a moment's pause, Jake continued, 'Are you afraid of losing one of your friends? This isn't about something to do with—you know—boys and girls, is it?'

Sonny was thinking about his father's use of the expression 'one of your friends'. Jodie wasn't actually one of his friends: in fact, he didn't have any friends apart from Jane—if Jane. It was not long ago that he'd been explaining that to Tom. He'd thought he was happy with one friend. But if he lost that one friend, he'd have no friends … he'd managed with no friends for years … but he liked Jane ….

The beginning of his answer to his father had popped out easily enough while he was still thinking things through. 'No, Dad, you know I'm not into that whole dating thing. It's got nothing to do with anything like that. I just said some things to Jodie about the project we were working on that rubbed her the wrong way and … well … I was wondering whether there might be a pattern of my alienating people with rigid and unrealistic attitudes.'

'I did overhear part of your argument with Jodie, and she did sound ticked off. Maybe she said some things because she was upset, just to get back at you. You know, sometimes people do have arguments like that and then find they can work them out. I think it's good that you have high standards. They make me proud of my boy. You know, you can succeed in business and still have standards, whatever some people say. But if you're going to do that you need to talk with people about it, not just expect everybody to see it your way or else write them off. If I've learned one thing as a marketing consultant …'

Before Sonny's father could say any more, they were interrupted by Sonny's mother coming to the door. 'Sonny', she said, 'could you please remember to rinse off your dishes before you put them into the dishwasher.' She held up a cup saying 'World's Greatest Dad', with a strange shape stuck to its side. 'I found one of your cheese fries melted onto this.'

'Oh my God!' said Jake. 'A cheese fry? That looks like some kind of vermin! You could have put me off coffee for life!'

'Sorry, Dad', Sonny said. He came across and took the cup from his mother's hand so that he could peel off the excrescence. 'No, definitely just a cheese fry. And Dad … thanks for the advice.'

His father was still staring in shock at the object in Sonny's hand. Sonny wrapped it in a tissue and threw it into the trash. When he turned back to the door, his parents were gone.

Sonny thought for a moment, and then settled down to some work connected with his economics assignment.

The result of his work was a small document which he was carrying when he met Jodie outside Mrs Bennett's classroom. He explained to her that he wasn't going to do anything to subvert her presentation but that he would be making his own contribution to supplement hers.

Bennett called on Sonny and Jodie to report on their exercise after Mack and Kevin. Working with Mack had apparently not prevented Kevin from doing something stupid, although Sonny didn't bother paying enough attention to gather the details. When he and Jodie came to the front of the class, Sonny let his partner explain the preparation of the business plan for 'Millennium Project Enterprises' and the way they'd developed the presentation for the banks. He stood silently by until she'd finished and then said, 'I'd like to thank my partner for all the hard work she put into the project, including additional research into a first-hand perspective from a real successful business. I personally learned something about working with somebody else in the real world. We also obtained some insights from this assignment about realistically adapting your approach to the situation you find yourself in while respecting ethical boundaries, and into a number of related subjects including nepotism, cronyism, influence-peddling, name-dropping, sex discrimination, racial discrimination, and age discrimination. Those topics are briefly discussed in this', he said, handing some papers to Bennett, 'short appendix to our presentation, incorporating additional research, which I would like to submit for consideration for possible extra credit.'

* * *

><p>After class Jodie thanked Sonny for what he'd said.<p>

'Credit where credit's due', he said. 'And speaking of credit, I had a feeling you couldn't have an objection to the possibility of extra credit.'

'Still the cynic, huh? Maybe we both had the chance to learn something about working with somebody with a different approach.'

'Maybe. But I hope you won't take it the wrong way if I say that my first priority won't be applying that lesson with you.'

Jodie shrugged. 'Like we both said once, we each have to do what works for us now. I still don't think I could have done this project with Mack. You did bring something different to it. So thanks.'

'I just wish I could say I've been doing what works for me now, but I just ticked myself off along with everybody else. Sorry.'

'Maybe you should be apologising to somebody else.'

'Maybe I should.'

'Well, I'm going to find Mack.' Jodie walked off, and Sonny turned round to Jane, who'd come out of class behind them.

'I guess you heard some of that', he said.

'Actually', said Jane, 'since you've been learning so much about adjusting to somebody else, I wanted to ask you about a scenario. A hypothetical scenario.'

'Go ahead.'

'Well, let's say, hypothetically, that you had a really good friend that you were really close to. And let's say that your situation had changed and you weren't spending as much time with this friend as you used to, even though the friendship was still just as important to you as ever. And let's say your friend was having some trouble adjusting to the new situation and deliberately tried to tick you off. You get what I'm saying so far?'

Sonny's nose twitched slightly, but he just said, 'Oh yes.'

Jane nodded. 'Good. Well, let's say you know that your friend feels bad about everything now. So what I'm proposing—in this hypothetical scenario—is that you might just forgive your friend without even asking for an apology, just to show that you're still best friends.'

'That's a very interesting scenario you propose. I think what I would like to say is that if I ever find myself in a scenario like that one, I hope that I will have learned to be a big enough person to do what you propose. But if I did, mightn't my friend feel overwhelmed?'

Jane nodded again. 'I think you might leave your friend some time to digest things, and then get together later for pizza, like after school perhaps.'

'Sounds like a good idea.'

'I thought so. And next time the two of us get together, I promise to leave off telling stories about Tom for the time being.'

'You don't have to do that.'

Jane grinned. 'Oh, but I do. Because now you've got to hear all my stories about the time I had to spend as Brittany's partner! Who else is going to appreciate them like you?'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Partner's Complaint' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	41. A Hard Journey And Back Again

**Not So Different**

_**41. A Hard Journey And Back Again**_

Sonny sat in his room with a stack of his old journals next to him. He was taking inventory.

He would rather have been hanging out with Jane, but Jane was on a date with Tom. That was a good opportunity for him to take inventory, as well as an important part of the reason.

In his journals there were notes about the talks he'd had with Jodie Landon that time at Grove Hills, and then again when they'd been partnered on the economics project. There were notes about things Trent had said to him on the trip to Alternapalooza, and when Jane first got together with Tom. There were notes about the conversation he'd had with Tom when Tom challenged him about his attitude to Tom's dating Jane. And there were lots of notes about himself and Jane over the last year and a half.

When he was with Jane, he'd told Jodie, he felt like himself, only more so. But who was himself? He'd taken inventory before. He knew all the things that drew bullies to pick on him, he had extensive notes on that, and he was determined not to let the fact of being bullied change him, but did that add up to who the person was that wasn't going to be changed?

He'd felt comfortable with Jane almost instantly when she approached him, but they had come together because she had seen something in him first. Did Jane know who he was?

Did Jane know who she was? Yes, always. She got him to wangle a party invitation out of Brittany for her. She knew he thought it was stupid, but she didn't let that stop her. She knew he thought it was stupid going off with that big-headed buffoon to the make-out room, but she'd done it anyway. She'd known what he thought about organised sport, but she hadn't let that stop her from joining the track team. She'd dumped it again for _her _reasons, not for his. When they'd been on the outs over that, he was the one who'd really suffered. He'd got along without her before he met her, but could he get along without her now?

That wasn't the point. Maybe he could get along without her, but he didn't want to, and why should he? What Tom had said to him about how the dating thing shouldn't be a threat to Sonny's friendship with Jane carried immediate intellectual conviction, but he was now forced to admit to himself that he had failed to integrate it emotionally with the same promptness. He'd thought about how to adjust his attitude to Tom more than about how he needed to adjust his attitude to Jane. Tom had been right about the reasons for Sonny to adjust his attitude to Tom, and it didn't _have_ to mean changing who he was, but where was the line? He'd realised and acknowledged the stupid mistake he'd made over the economics project, but what was he to do now? Who was he to be now? Jane liked him for who he was, but she hadn't liked his humiliating her in front of Evan, or his deliberately ticking her off over the economics project, so she thought he could adjust his attitude and still be himself. Maybe she knew about his self better than he did.

He flicked over a page of his journal, and was reminded of the school's so-called 'Medieval Fair'. He'd thought it would be stupid, but Jane had said that was exactly the reason to go, and although things had ended a little disappointingly, there had been something right in her logic which he hadn't seen at first. It was at least an opportunity … or at least, being there with Jane was.

He sighed, and then yawned. He quoted to himself: _When action becomes unprofitable, gather information; when gathering information becomes unprofitable, sleep. _He put his journals away and himself to bed, finding himself unprofitably brooding just a little longer before, more profitably, he dropped off.

His mind did not return to the subject when he woke up, but then at breakfast Quinn was using the occasion of a school field trip, an overnight hill trek, to extort new gear from their parents ('fashionable' climbing gear: only Quinn). Their mother saw the occasion of the children's departure on a field trip as an opportunity for some 'couple time' which would 'promote growth and togetherness'. Their father thought that was a great idea.

'I hate to burst this bubble of marital bliss', Sonny lied, and went on to explain ('Okay', Quinn said, 'Sonny's talking, I have to go now', and left the room) that _he _wasn't going on the field trip, with the inevitable unfortunate consequences for the parental plans. His objections to participating in the trip were based on such fundamental principles that his mother bribed him fifty dollars.

When his mother had also left the room, Sonny held the fifty-dollar bill in both hands like a book and studied it. Now he was going on the stupid field trip. Could there be the possibility of anything good in that? In retrospect, Jane had been right to suggest that there was the possibility of something good from going to that stupid medieval fair. Of course, he'd done that with Jane, and she had wanted to go, but she didn't want to go on this hill trek.

Or at least that's what she'd told him.

But now that he thought about it, she'd been careful to find out his opinion first before giving hers.

He looked at the money again.

The point of a fifty-dollar bill was to get fifty dollars of value out of it …

* * *

><p>Sonny and Quinn's parents were having their 'couple time' to 'promote growth and togetherness' at the Big River Cabins, just a couple of miles from the campsite for the school field trip. They reminded their children of this as they dropped them off at the school, where the buses were waiting for them. Then Jake unloaded three large bags of Quinn's new gear, got back into the car, and drove off.<p>

Jane walked up to Sonny.

'Thanks for coming', he said.

'Hey, that's what friends are for', said Jane. 'Now, where's that fifty dollars?'

Sonny handed over the money. 'You know', he said for form's sake, 'I really should have thought this through better.'

He heard what sounded like Kevin and Brittany approaching, and looked round to see that it was. He turned towards the buses. 'Come on', he said, 'let's make sure we get seated on a different bus from them.' Then he noticed the Fashion Club gathering. 'And them too.'

When they reached the buses they found Mr DeMartino herding students on to one of them using harsh sarcasm and a megaphone. Ms Onepu was carefully loading luggage into the luggage bay, while wittering about the school's responsibility to the students, its extension to responsibility for students' possessions, and the importance of meticulous stowage to prevent damage during transit.

Things were already getting stupid.

Things got rapidly more stupid when they reached the point where they were to debark from the buses for the foot passage.

Mr O'Neill assigned responsibility for transporting field supplies to Jamie, Jeffy, and Joey. Sure, they had the strength of jocks, but even if their hearts were pure, what about their brains?

If Sonny were ever to feel disposed to remonstrate with people about their stupidity, he wouldn't be starting with O'Neill (who was now wheezing at the abundance of pollen and sucking on his inhaler). That would only make the man do something even more stupid—telling O'Neill he was being stupid was practically definitional of 'counter-productive'. Along with Jane, Sonny turned his attention instead to the clouding sky, which looked as if it might be threatening a blizzard—of 'epic proportions', according to Jane.

The response from Ms Li, who materialised at this point like a pantomime devil (okay, she must just have been on the other bus, with O'Neill), was to assure them that they'd all 'reach base camp long before any inclement weather should arrive'.

'Thank you, Principal Donner', Sonny said.

The stupidity hadn't stopped. Li produced from a pack a large video camera. She expected documentary film of the trek to secure sponsorship from 'Extreme Sportz Mania Worldwide Inc' for the school's 'Wilderness Adventure Club'.

Jane pointed out that the school didn't have a Wilderness Adventure Club.

'We do now', Li said, before assigning the camera to O'Neill and telling him to film Sonny and Jane doing 'something rugged'.

'Okay', Sonny said to Jane, 'that's beyond stupid. Is it her eyesight that's going or her mind?'

'When did you turn into such an optimist?' Jane replied. 'Why can't it be both?'

'Wouldn't that be the optimistic suggestion?'

'When she's about to lead us on an overnight survival trek?'

Sonny blinked. 'You got me.'

Somehow, while Li and O'Neill were footling, DeMartino, ably obstructed by Onepu, had marshalled the students to begin the hike. At first, nothing less unremarkable happened than Kevin Thompson doing something stupid (he gave Brittany a bunch of flowers containing a swarm of bees). Then the real trouble started with O'Neill's allergies acting up. 'Mack' Mackenzie was concerned. O'Neill's inhaler was empty and he couldn't find his spare. Mack was even more concerned.

Sonny expressed _his_ concern, and disappointment, that O'Neill's collapse would force them to turn back (how unfortunate!), but Li was having none of it. She still wanted film from the summit to lock in the sponsorship deal she lusted for. Somebody would just have to 'short-rope' O'Neill, she said. She looked round meaningfully.

Sonny would never have picked Onepu as the type who would defy Li, but she burst in at once. 'Would that be properly responsible? We have to think of the children! Already, with Mr O'Neill incapacitated, we don't really have enough people to supervise them, and can anybody properly supervise _and _attend to Mr O'Neill? Do we have anybody with trained expertise as a mountain guide?' She looked round wildly, and suddenly Sonny realised that she didn't _know _that she was defying the principal. Not wanting to stem her flow, he muttered his explanatory commentary to Jane as Onepu continued. 'What if somebody tried to short-rope Mr O'Neill and then gave way under the strain? How would we look after the children then? We have to think so carefully about our responsibilities! We must be sure that we have considered properly just what the right thing to do is!'

'Ms Onepu!' snapped Li. 'You don't need to concern yourself about management decisions. I assure you that the situation is perfectly under control. We can easily press on to the summit, so long as'—Li paused and looked away from Onepu until her eyes lit on—'Mr DeMartino short-ropes Mr O'Neill, and, of course, somebody else takes charge of the filming.'

As Onepu responded to what she clearly failed to understand was a rebuke, Sonny observed quietly to Jane that if she flapped any harder they could use her in place of a rescue helicopter.

'Mr DeMartino! Oh, thank you! It's so good to know that we can rely on you to put your expertise at the service of the welfare of these precious children, whom we all value so much! But you must be careful not to overtax yourself! If you were to collapse under the strain, like Mr O'Neill, how could we take care of the children?'

DeMartino's eye throbbed like a hernia. 'Thank you for your _concern_, Ms Onepu!' he rasped. 'I was _hired_ as a teacher, if you can _call_ it that, but certainly not _as_ a mountaineer!' He moved close to Li and they drew aside from the students to expostulate with each other, although when it came to expostulation neither of them could compete with Onepu, who joined them. Sonny couldn't make out the words in the confusion of voices, one hoarse, one shrill, and one domineering, but Jane noted with satisfaction that things seemed to be going thoroughly badly.

Jodie Landon overheard them and explained that DeMartino was the head of the Lawndale Teachers Union and that he was still carrying a grudge over the last round of contract negotiations with Li.

'In that case', Sonny said, 'I bet he didn't like the way Li was talking about "management decisions".'

'For some reason', Jane added, shrugging and raising her eyebrows with elaborate irony, 'there's something about Onepu that stirs him up as well.'

Sonny rubbed his hands together. 'Sounds like the right combination of volatile ingredients to set off a nice explosion.'

'I don't understand you two', Jodie said. 'You do realise this is a _survival _trek we're on?'

Sonny looked at her dead on and flattened his voice further. 'Of course. That's why we're always on the lookout for the silver lining, for psychological survival.'

Jodie shook her head and went back to Mack, just as Li, DeMartino, and Onepu broke apart and came back towards the students to announce what was going to happen.

Disappointingly, they'd come up with what sounded as if it might be a half-way rational plan. One group, led by DeMartino and including some of the stronger jocks, would carry O'Neill back down to the buses and try to find his spare inhaler. Another group, led by Li and chosen more for speed than strength, would push on as fast as possible to the campsite in order to set it up for everybody else. Both groups would travel light and leave their packs with the third group, everybody else, who would stay where they were with Onepu for the time being.

When Jamie, Jeffy, and Joey were selected for Li's group, DeMartino discovered that they couldn't at this point leave the supply bags, which O'Neill had entrusted to them, with Onepu's group, because they'd already abandoned them back by the buses in order to carry Quinn's luggage instead. Onepu started to panic and DeMartino to rant, until the most adult members of the party, Jodie and Mack, stepped in to point out that it was just as well that the discovery had been made so soon, because it wasn't too late to correct the problem. More important than recrimination was for DeMartino's group to get going as quickly as possible so that they could recover the supplies as well as O'Neill's inhaler.

Jamie, Jeffy, and Joey were quickly reassigned to the downhill mission, and at that point Sonny spoke softly to Jane.

'Kevin's going downhill, and Brittany's staying here, so what do you say to heading up?'

'We'll be in the team with the video camera then', Jane observed. 'Maybe we'll get an opportunity to operate it for a while and create some embarrassing footage.'

Li was predictably not thrilled when they volunteered, but she could hardly refuse the school's (former) best track athlete when speed was of the essence. She wanted to draw the line at Sonny and split him from Jane, but DeMartino and Onepu both spoke up for him, and Jodie and Mack repeated that there was no time to waste arguing. (Mack was going with DeMartino and Jodie was staying with Onepu in an effort to provide a rational influence.)

In a small group not burdened by packs the 'advance party' did move significantly faster, and soon reached their bunkhouse destination. Li's first priority was still the filming, but she wanted the film to show her capably taking charge of the situation (even she could no longer deny the ominous signs in the sky of imminent snow), and she started organising the group to explore the bunkhouse and collect wood so that they could get fires going for warmth as soon as possible and have everything ready for the rest of the students as soon as they arrived. To that end, she said, she also wanted two people to go back to the main group and, if the supplies had arrived, bring them on as quickly as possible. Naturally, she picked out Sonny and Jane for this assignment—as the two least suited to heavy work, or so she said. Jane was disappointed to lose the chance to get her hands on the camera, but Sonny liked the opportunity to be away from people.

With just the two of them, and going downhill instead of up, they went even faster. Sonny always found he could go faster when Jane set the pace. Haste also helped to keep them warm as the air continued to chill. They had been heavily dressed for the weather, until the weather started getting too heavy for their dress. Snow had already started falling when they rounded a corner of the trail and encountered Jodie, who led them at once, with their message, to Onepu.

Onepu had just started to flap over Li's message—because it consisted of instructions about what to do if the supplies had arrived, but the supplies had not arrived—when DeMartino's party arrived, with all the supplies and with O'Neill fully recovered thanks to a spare inhaler.

'Oh, thank goodness! And thank you, Sonny and Jane! And thank you, Mr DeMartino, for your planning and perseverance! Now, we must get these precious children safely to the bunkhouse as fast as their legs will carry them, but we must make sure nothing gets left behind this time …' As Mack, Jodie, and DeMartino quickly marshalled people and equipment for the final assault on the mountain, Onepu continued running interference, although Sonny couldn't be sure for which side. Her non-stop nervous chatter did perform the one useful function of shutting down O'Neill every time he tried to open his mouth.

Having been all the way up the mountain and a lot of the way back down again already, Sonny was starting to tire a little, and so long as Jane was with him he was happy enough to fall to the rear of the ascending party and thus avoid other people. Out of the packs they now had with them again they had produced additional protection against the weather, but as the snow fell faster it began not only to reduce visibility but to cover the trail they were supposed to be following. They needed to keep the people ahead in view, but with each bend of the trail this got harder. Sonny remarked on this to Jane.

'If we get lost in a snowstorm with no equipment and no leadership, what started out as a grim, life-negating field trip could turn into a grim, life-negating gape into the void.'

'With our luck', Jane replied, 'we'll probably be reincarnated and have to do high school all over again from the beginning.'

Sonny looked straight at Jane and Jane looked straight back. Then, as one, they strode out with the gait of people who have just realised that up to this point they had been deceiving themselves when they thought they were going as fast as possible.

They weren't doing badly until the rude wind blew stronger. Not having steps printed by a saint in which to tread, they were forced to slow. Jane, more athletic, caught her breath first.

'If we can't keep up, Sonny', Jane said, 'this could be bad.'

Sonny inhaled, exhaled, and inhaled again. 'Listen', he said, 'I'm sorry I always behaved like such a jerk whenever it seemed like you might be interested in a boy, and especially about Tom.'

'Well', Jane said without looking at him, 'I'm sorry I got you into total humiliation with that trip to Alternapalooza. And remember when you had that peanut butter sandwich stuck to your … stuck to you? I was checking you out', she admitted.

They kept moving as fast as the conditions allowed, Sonny still panting slightly. After a pause, he said, 'You didn't have much to apologise for, did you?'

'It was kind of pathetic', Jane replied. 'I feel like we should say more.'

'Um … I'm sorry my parents didn't stop at one child.' _But I'm glad your parents didn't_, he added silently to himself, watching the bobble on Jane's beanie bounce.

'I'm sorry they added those ugly blue M&Ms', said Jane, and then, 'Better?'

'I've made my peace.'

They could still see each other, but little else. After a minute or two of silence, Sonny looked at Jane's legs moving and then picked up the pace. Jane easily matched him, of course. After another minute or two, Jane thought she recognised a clump of trees as they passed it by. And then, rounding another bend, they could see the outline of the bunkhouse blurrily through the driving snow and then, as they broke into a half-trot towards it, the people just ahead of them.

Onepu called out to them. 'Sonny? Jane? Is that you? You're the last! Well done! The fire's blazing hot! Quickly! You mustn't get hypothermia!'

'That would be bad, wouldn't it?' said Jane. 'We'd miss out on spending the night with all our classmates.'

'It's not all bad', Sonny said. 'At least you got that thing off your chest about the blue M&Ms.'

_Fifty dollars worth of value? _he thought. _I say yes._

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Antisocial Climbers' by Jill Cargerman<strong>_


	42. Bad And Good Ideas

**Not So Different**

_**42. Bad And Good Ideas**_

'Yo!' Kevin Thompson called to Sonny and Jane, when they saw him as they walked through the mall. 'Check this out!' He was with (or all over) Brittany Taylor outside 'Gimme Some Skin', a shop selling leather clothing, including motorcycle jackets like the presumably freshly purchased one he was wearing.

'Is this what you Earth people call "making out"?' Sonny said.

'No', said Kevin, 'I mean check out the new Kevin.'

'New Kevin?' said Jane. 'Brittany, are you trading up?'

Brittany, of course, didn't get it. 'No, now he's a rebel in his new jacket, don't you think?'

Jane said, 'Where's the bike?'

Kevin gave a grunt of incomprehension.

Sonny explained the protective function of motorcycle jackets, such as the one Kevin was wearing.

'If you're just wearing it for style', Jane elaborated, 'then it's a waste of a perfectly good cow.'

Sonny offered an analogy, secure in the knowledge that analogies were outside Kevin's range. 'You wouldn't wear shoulder pads if you didn't play football, would you?'

Jane raised a provocative eyebrow. 'Or would you?' Kevin was sufficiently discomfited by this profound intellectual challenge to allow Sonny and Jane to make their escape.

They did not imagine the fruit that grew from the seed of their idle mischief until they saw Kevin (with Brittany riding pillion) arriving at school on what Sonny described as having the appearance of a very fast lawnmower. Kevin stopped in front of Sonny and Jane to show them what they'd gone and done now, although no doubt he himself didn't think of it in those terms. Sonny asked him where his Shriner's fez was, confident that Kevin would not understand the joke.

Brittany was even more excited to think that now both she and Kevin looked like 'rebels', until Jane put a spanner in the works by observing a dead cricket caught in Brittany's front teeth ('very James Dean', Jane said). Brittany checked in her compact and wished plaintively for new teeth.

Sonny said 'I'm sure the guys in wood shop can come up with something.'

'Before first period?' said Jane. 'Don't think so.'

As Brittany fled (with Kevin still showing no signs of empathising with her distress), Sonny reflected on Jane's comparison of the first apparition of the 'rebels' to a circus coming to town. A very small circus, he thought, just two clowns. They'd had the need for the services of a ringmaster, and he and Jane had combined to supply it.

While Sonny mused on this analogy, some of Kevin's football teammates had approached. 'Mack' Mackenzie reminded Kevin about motorcycle helmets.

'Hey, I don't follow rules. I'm rebellent.'

'Or repellent', Sonny said to Jane.

'How he affects me', Jane agreed.

As more students swelled the circus audience, some began to call for Kevin to 'pop a wheelie'. When the chanting began, Kevin agreed. As he pulled out into the street again, Sonny said, 'Gee, this won't end badly.'

Jane remarked to Sonny on their responsibility for Kevin's having a motorcycle in the first place. Was she feeling bad about what might happen? Sonny repurposed an old parental standby line.

'If we told him to jump off the roof, would he do that?'

'Dunno. We'll try that next time.' She wasn't feeling bad. Sonny was relieved.

Kevin, by this time, was speeding along the street towards them, but then he swerved to avoid a parked car and came up over the kerb, and his miniature hog crashed into the fence around the Tommy Sherman Memorial Tree. Thrown right off, Kevin snapped the tree itself in two before coming to earth on top of the other side of the fence, screaming in pain and clutching an injured knee.

Some people ran up to Kevin.

Jane told Sonny that she was reminded of a parallel incident at her fourth birthday party, 'only it involved a tiny tricycle and a chimp'.

'The difference being?' he said.

* * *

><p>Sonny made a point of savouring the experience of the next couple of days, while Kevin's sprained knee kept him out of school. Too soon, alas, he returned. Sure, so long as he was on crutches he was easier to evade, but for Sonny it wasn't the same as having him not there at all.<p>

Apparently it was for Brittany. Kevin had convinced himself, to Brittany's great grief, that now he was unfit for football he was also unfit for a cheerleader's love.

The football team, too, was suffering. In Kevin's absence, Mack was substituting as quarterback, but to make up for his total superiority to Kevin as a human being in every respect, he lacked Kevin's mysterious unique talent for calling the plays that gave the Lawndale Lions victory again and again.

Then things turned bad for Sonny. He was having lunch with Jane, as usual (he was lucky, thinking of it, that Jane's boyfriend went to a different school), and Kevin came and sat at the same table, right next to Sonny.

'Excuse me?' Sonny said.

'This is the table where losers sit, right?' said Kevin.

Sonny repeated himself. 'Excuse me?'

'I used to be the QB', Kevin said unnecessarily. 'But now I'm just a one-knee guy. Everywhere I go, people look at me and see nothing but a big fat loser. Now I've got to learn to be a loser and do the things that losers do.'

Sonny pulled out a notebook and pen and started writing rapidly as Kevin continued.

'That's why I'm going to hang out here at this losers' table. There's all kinds of stuff I need to know, like how losers date. Football players date cheerleaders, but I can't ask Brit to date somebody who's not even going to be in any yearbook team pictures. There's all kinds of stuff you can tell me.'

'We're not dating', Sonny said, without lifting his eyes from his writing.

Kevin looked from Sonny to Jane.

'Say, babe …', he began, but Jane cut him off.

'I have a boyfriend', she said, and (as Sonny finished writing, tore a page out of his notebook, and handed it to her) 'He goes to another school.'

'Is he a loser too?'

'Do you know', Jane said, 'the idea of asking him has never crossed my mind?'

Sonny intervened in the conversation again. 'I just hang out with Jane. I don't do that whole dating thing.' He put his pen and notebook away. 'But you know what, Kevin? I don't think you need to learn anything from me about being a loser. As far as I'm concerned, you've always been rebellent and you always will be.'

As Sonny spoke to Kevin, he observed from the corner of his eye that Jane was reading his note. What he had written was this:

**_After I leave the table, wait two minutes and then tell Kevin you're going to go and find me and find out what's holding me up. Meet me on the roof. With any luck, by the time we encounter Kevin again he'll have forgotten all about it._**

Sonny tapped the table with his hand. 'I just remembered something', he said. 'I'll just go and take care of it and I'll be back in a minute.' He stood up from the table and walked out of the room.

When Jane met him on the roof a few minutes later, he expressed his concern about the situation. He didn't want to be confronted at every turn by Kevin seeking access to the 'Losers' Instruction Manual', but the problem was so novel to him, he had no immediate inspirations for dealing with it. He asked Jane to meet him after school for pizza in the hope that it would stimulate the thought processes.

'Actually', Jane said, 'I've already arranged to meet Tom for pizza after school today. Would it bother you having him around for this discussion?'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'So long as I'm not going to be a third wheel.'

Jane reassured him and Sonny accepted her assurances.

Jane looked around them. 'You know, I already had one idea before when I said we could tell Kevin to jump off the roof.'

'Not certain enough. He might only land on his head.'

* * *

><p>Later, over pizza, Jane and Sonny told Tom about the problem. To solve it they needed to find a new reason for Kevin to feel good about himself but, as Jane explained, there weren't any.<p>

'It's not like third grade', Sonny said, 'where winning a paste-eating contest counts for something.'

Tom chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of pizza. 'That gives me an idea. Maybe an elementary school is just the place where he could feel good about himself again.'

Sonny shook his head. 'He'd never meet the admissions standard.' But Tom had a real inspiration.

'He could give talks about safety. Use his accident as an example. The kids would probably rather listen to him than a teacher, and the captive audience would make him feel important.'

Jane clapped her hands together. 'So simple, and yet so perfect.' She turned to Sonny. 'Why didn't we think of that?'

'I guess it just goes to show that we really are nothing but a pair of big fat losers. Who wants another slice?'

'Ms Onepu?'

'Sonny? Jane? How good it is to see you both! I mean, is there anything I can do to help you? Do you have any problems? Any concerns you want to discuss? As one of your teachers I see it as my responsibility to be available to you—to _all _my students—to all the students in the _school_—always to be available if there's ever any way in which I can do anything, no matter how small—'

Sonny explained that they wanted to talk about Kevin Thompson.

'About Kevin? Yes, it's very worrying, isn't it? Poor Kevin! I've been thinking a lot about what I, or rather the whole faculty, can do to ease the burden of his troubles. I take our responsibility to offer support to students like Kevin very seriously. Of course, I don't in any way mean to devalue the tremendously important contribution that his fellow-students can make! I feel that many teachers don't give enough weight to what students have to offer. Of course, it's our responsibility to support and nurture them, but that includes a responsibility to take them seriously and to recognise and acknowledge their abilities. I'm sure you have many excellent suggestions to make about how Kevin can be assisted at this very difficult time for him, and it reflects great credit on you that you're making this effort out of your deep concern for a fellow-student.'

Jane repeated Tom's suggestion about how Kevin could lecture elementary school students on the link between recklessness and injury, from his own experience.

Sonny added, 'They don't have to know he was brain-damaged before the accident.'

'Why, what a profound conception! At one and the same time we'd be helping Kevin _and _shouldering part of the enormous responsibility that is the welfare of those immeasurably precious elementary school students! Jane, Sonny, I can't begin to tell you how privileged I feel to have known you! But I'm wasting time, talking to you about my feelings, when I should not let myself delay a moment in asking Ms Li to contact the district office so that we can start making arrangements at once! Oh, I'm so excited, but I mustn't dally! I'm sure you'll excuse me, even if I can't find proper words to express my appreciation! Responsibility to all the students above all, that must be our watchword!'

* * *

><p>In less than a fortnight, Tom Sloane's plan had, to use Jane's words, 'backfired perfectly'. After Kevin's speaking tour of the elementary schools, he felt as good about himself as ever, or possibly even more so. In Mr DeMartino's class, he proudly displayed a school newspaper account of his triumphs, complete with congratulatory photo, as he told about the children who had been saved from danger by his example. Even DeMartino described the report as '<em>peachy<em>'—before adding, 'Although _what_ it has to do with the _League_ of Nations, which was your assigned _topic_, I _fail to understand_!'

While Kevin had found something to substitute for football in his life, some other people still weren't finding it so easy. Ms Li had tried to revive the team by accepting a transfer student in his sixth year of high school to take over Kevin's place as quarterback. He resembled a rhinoceros both in his build and physical toughness and in his violent and unpredictable temper, something he had already given Sonny a first-hand demonstration of when they had chanced to encounter. Sonny had made a special note of the experience: he had not previously had that kind of interaction with anybody of similar upper-body development. Some people would have chosen to desist from sarcasm in the face of such musculature, but that would never be Sonny's style.

What was worse was the ripple effect of the failure of the football team's record to recover, despite Li's intervention. Sonny would not have thought that even a place as stupid as Lawndale could have so much invested in the success of a high school football team, but he could not dispute the empirical evidence.

First Quinn and her Fashion Club cronies were humiliated by the salespeople at their favourite purveyors of apparel, who were trying to avoid having their image associated with losers from a loser school with a loser football team. As she was explaining to Helen that the family needed to move to a more popular town (she was compiling a list of them), Jake arrived home and began ranting about how they were going to be ruined because the value of their home was being destroyed by living in a loser town. Helen pointed out to him that he was relying for his information on the _Lawndale Shopper_, written by an eighty-year-old who had to be taken off the roof by the fire department 'because he thought he was being chased by screaming mice'—but later Sonny caught her trying to smudge the return address labels on some mail she was about to post.

Sonny always claimed afterwards that he deserved credit for solving this new problem. He never denied that the solution was a fluke, but he insisted that the fluke only had the chance to come off because of his perseverance. After all, he said, he could have ignored it when Brittany Taylor came round collecting for a fund to replace the Tommy Sherman Memorial Tree (in an effort, Brittany said, to stop Tommy Sherman's ghost from haunting the girls' room—Sonny really didn't want to know).

Instead, he suggested that Tommy Sherman's ghost might be appeased if Brittany planted one of Kevin's crutches in place of the tree. He was curious to see whether Brittany would buy the idea. She did. After she'd gone, Jane (who'd been by-standing) said, 'You know you're going to hell.'

'Anything that gets me out of Lawndale.'

What Sonny later admitted he hadn't actually foreseen was what happened when Brittany approached Kevin in the cafeteria to ask for one of his crutches. (Kevin had, much to Sonny's relief, abandoned the 'losers' table' and was sitting with Mack). Kevin and Brittany hadn't been together since Kevin's accident. Now, although Kevin refused Brittany's request for a crutch (because he needed his crutches for his career as a safety lecturer), he had recovered sufficient self-esteem to suggest that she could be his 'babe' again. Even though he wasn't a football player, he felt that he was still the same man—which even Sonny had to acknowledge privately was technically true, although he didn't feel the same way about it that Kevin did. But Brittany disagreed.

'_My _Kevvy is a football leader of men. _My _Kevvy wouldn't let the whole team down. _My _Kevvy wouldn't let Lawndale become a loser town!'

This confrontation brought Kevin to what, for want of a better word and relatively at most, could only be referred to as his senses. As Kevin himself put it, 'what's saving lives if there's nobody to make out with?' Healed by Brittany's love (at least, that's what he called it), he discarded his crutches, heedless of the consequences (specifically, one of them fell on Mack's toes). Brittany ran joyously to his arms.

So, solely (Sonny always insisted) because of his suggestion that Brittany approach Kevin for a crutch, the Lawndale Lions star quarterback returned, the team's record of triumph resumed, and nobody called Lawndale a loser town any more. If it wasn't exactly a happy ending, there were a few laughs in it or, failing that, at least a wry half-smile. On somebody's face. Not Sonny's.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'A Tree Grows In Lawndale' by Peter Elwell<strong>_


	43. Impossible, Barely Possible, Too Likely

**Not So Different**

**43. **_**Im**_**possible, **_**Barely **_**Possible, Only Too Likely**

The too familiar words were still echoing in his mind as he flicked through the dossiers: 'Good morning, Mr Jacob … your mission, should you choose to accept it …'

Thinking about the target, this Kevin Thompson, made Agent Quinn an obvious choice. Agent Lane was a near-automatic selection. Now, who else was available? Ruttheimer was out on parole? The rest of the team wouldn't like it, but nobody else was available with his skills. As the plan for the mission formed in his mind, he decided that a suitable team could be completed with Mack, who could have the additional job of keeping Ruttheimer in check.

* * *

><p>Quinn and Lane made the final adjustments to Jacob's pre-prepared mask. They'd already fitted the rest of his disguise. Ruttheimer was monitoring the security system as Mack broke them into the building. Now it was time for a quick check to make sure that the earpiece was still working under the mask. Jacob pointed at Lane and she spoke softly into her microphone. When she came through five by five he made a 'thumbs up' gesture and then pointed at Mack to test his microphone. After a second 'thumbs up', he signalled everybody into position.<p>

Mack went first with Ruttheimer, escorting him to the security control room. After three minutes, he broke silence to let them know, by a code phrase, that the two of them were inside, and after another three minutes again, to let them know that Ruttheimer had hacked into the system. The period of preparation undercover was starting to pay off.

Lane moved quickly to her designated observation position and then it was time for Jacob himself to make his entrance, adopting a Thompsonian swagger. From his earpiece he heard a few words from Mack conveying the message that they had him on video tape and that—in the poor light—he was indistinguishable from the target. A minute later, as he made his way along the hallway, he received Lane's code phrase to confirm that Quinn had closed the door and taken up her position outside it. Now everybody and everything was in place except him.

He moved quickly to the room in which he would find the filing cabinet used by DeMartino. It was not a difficult one to open, but for the benefit of the recording cameras he made the sort of obviously crude job of it that would be in character for Kevin Thompson. As he quickly located the test papers, he heard Lane's voice letting him know that the man himself had arrived, and that Quinn had intercepted him and was now delaying him with flirtation as previously planned. He took the papers across to a desk and then pulled out the folder he'd brought with him. Mack's voice confirmed that the security tape would, as intended, show him (or 'Kevin Thompson') doing something with the papers, without making clear just what. Jacob fiddled about for long enough to satisfy the cameras, then turned back to the cabinet and slid some papers into it before restoring it quickly to a facsimile of its original condition adequate to deceive somebody of the target's limited intellect. Just as he was doing so Lane's voice came through again: the target had disengaged from Quinn and was on his way to the room with the filing cabinet. Jacob got out in time to avoid him and made his way through the hallways back to Lane's position. As he reached her, and gave her an 'Okay' signal, his earpiece crackled faintly as Mack broke silence again. The target was 'breaking into' the filing cabinet, having failed, as predicted, to notice the previous tampering, but nothing of this second intrusion would show up on the security tapes when checked: Ruttheimer still had the system under control.

Jacob handed a folder of papers to Lane, who moved outside to be ready for the next phase of the operation, while Jacob took over from her in the observation position. He waited patiently until Mack alerted him that the target was once again on the move. A few minutes later, he saw Thompson moving along the hallway and then leaving the building, and Quinn intercepted him again outside the door, holding him in conversation until Lane could dart round the corner and collide with him. She and Quinn then 'helped' him to pick up the papers he dropped, with Quinn distracting him while Lane made the critical switch.

As soon as Jacob was sure that Lane, Quinn, and the target had all departed, he returned to the filing cabinet. Mack's message reassured him that Ruttheimer was still manipulating the security system. He replaced the original test papers in their original position, made good the cabinet as nearly as possible, then returned to the entrance. Mack and Ruttheimer, who'd been following him by camera all the time, turned up a minute later, and once Mack had secured the entrance door as if nobody had been through it all night, they dispersed.

* * *

><p>The next day, Jacob was sitting in the back of the team van keeping an eye on Ruttheimer. Lane was in the driver's seat with Quinn beside her as they waited for Mack to come running, still in his football uniform.<p>

'Clockwork', he said, as he climbed into the van, and Jacob and Ruttheimer pulled the door to behind him. Jacob banged on the partition and Lane took off at the signal.

'I saw him handing out papers to other football players', Mack said. 'In the locker room it wasn't hard to get to his bag when nobody was looking and make the final switch. They've all got the wrong answers, he's got the right ones, and he'll never figure out why.'

Ruttheimer rubbed his hands together. 'And when the investigation happens, the security tapes will show him clearly breaking into the filing cabinet.' He snickered. 'But he'll never be able to explain to the other players what happened. They'll probably beat the stuffing out of him …'

* * *

><p>—and Sonny woke up.<p>

* * *

><p>'So you woke up before the resolution of the story', said Jane. 'I still don't understand who had which papers when and why. It just seems overly elaborate.'<p>

'Those fictional secret-agent plots never make sense when you look at them closely enough. Besides, I only dreamt it.'

'You still hadn't got to the bit where Kevin got his come-uppance, either.'

'Real-life stories are different.' Sonny ran one hand through his disorderly hair. 'Let's look at the situation we've got now, for example.'

'Well, we all know Kevin is the person who stole the test from DeMartino's filing cabinet and that he shared it with the other football players in the class so that they all scored full marks.'

'Except "Mack" Mackenzie.'

'Right, because he'd be too honest for them to include him, and besides he can get good grades without cheating.' Jane paused for a moment as Kevin Thompson approached. 'Anyway, now DeMartino says that he'll flunk us all, Kevin, if the person, Kevin, who stole the test from his filing cabinet, Kevin, doesn't confess, Kevin.'

Kevin halted for a moment so that he could fit a joke-shop prank-prop over his head to fake an arrow going through it. 'But look', he said, 'I'm dying!' He gave a loud ham-actor's version of a terminal cough as he staggered on along the hallway. 'Dying!'

Sonny raised one hand and gestured at the receding figure. 'You see', he said to Jane, 'we don't need come-uppance. The puzzle we need to solve is how to get a confession out of the guilty party, and I think I just might have an idea how to do it.' He moved off after Kevin, one hand still raised, calling out, 'Oh, Mr Thompson, I almost forgot—just one more question …'

Sonny half-heard Jane behind him saying, 'The other puzzle is why you're wearing that shabby old raincoat … and since when do you smoke a cigar—'

* * *

><p>—and Sonny <em>really <em>woke up.

* * *

><p>'You mean, you had a dream in which you dreamed you woke up but you were actually still asleep and in another dream?' Jane said.<p>

'Apparently that's the sort of convoluted thing that happens in my brain when I let myself fall asleep in front of the television. Lieutenant Sonny Columbo was right when he said those plots are too elaborate. I just hope this right now isn't another dream. The Fashion Club might show up as Charlie's Angels.' Sonny shuddered. 'Or Upchuck's Angels, with my luck.'

'Don't do that.' Jane flinched in unison with Sonny. 'Tell me whether you've got an actual solution to the actual puzzle.'

'I don't think so. Maybe DeMartino will decide on a re-test instead of automatically failing us all.'

'Or maybe he'll grab Kevin around the throat and start throttling him.'

Sonny blinked. 'That could only happen in a dream.'

Or could it?


	44. Failure As A Middle Name

**Not So Different**

_**44. Failure As A Middle Name**_

'This is the sort of thing we have to expect', Sonny said to Jane, 'when the Lawndale High faculty are allowed out on their own.' (The school had been closed for two days for a State-wide teachers' convention.) 'I'm still shuddering to think what mad ideas Onepu may have come back with, just in case this assignment of O'Neill's isn't bad enough.'

Something O'Neill had heard from one of the speakers at the convention had given him the idea of assigning the students in his class to attempt something they knew they would fail at, as a way of proving that failure wasn't the end of the world.

'And you know what you're going to fail at?' said Jane.

'Yeah, time for a little ju-jutsu. I'm going to fail to find any evidence that O'Neill has broken Federal law by harbouring a fugitive. Want to come with me when I go round to his place and spill all his trash? When else are you going to have such a perfect excuse to do that to a teacher?'

'But what if you do find some evidence that he's been helping Barch?'

Sonny raised his eyebrows and gave Jane a meaning look. 'That's the beauty of my choice of assignment. If I blow it, I still win.'

Impressed once again by Sonny's ingenuity, Jane decided to ask him to suggest a project for her 'failure' assignment as well. 'Something really impressive that doesn't require any effort of any kind', she specified.

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Hmm …', he said, and slowly and hesitantly moved his head from side to side. Jane couldn't understand what she'd done to make him so uncomfortable. They'd agreed that O'Neill's assignment was utterly pointless—in fact their first idea of something they could fail at was trying to see any merit in it—but Sonny had still managed to come up with a typically devious solution for himself. He still looked as if his mind was weaving devious loops, too—he did have some kind of idea, but whatever it was it was making him more than usually reticent.

'Come on, out with it', she said. 'What's the problem?'

'Well, there is one picture that just sprang into my mind—but I'm not sure you'll like it', he said. 'Maybe I should come up with something else. Particularly considering Tom.'

Jane wasn't happy about the sound of that. 'Listen, let me worry about Tom, okay?'

Sonny creased his forehead and pursed his lips. 'Okay, let's call this a hypothetical. Imagine you're watching it on television. It's some stupid teen soap opera or sitcom. The teen girl's in bed, she invites the teen boy into bed with her—and he refuses. Surprised, huh?'

Jane blanched at what Sonny might possibly be suggesting—or, she hoped, not. 'This is hypothetical, you said?' When Sonny nodded, she said, 'Well, hypothetically I'm surprised.' That was the truth. Could Sonny really be thinking about this?

'Listen, if you don't like the idea, let's just forget it.'

'I guess now that we've gone this far you might as well explain it to me.' _I hope you _can _explain it, _she thought.

'Well, the surprising thing is also a failure, isn't it? So there you go, that's your failure, guaranteed.'

Jane shook her head. 'Guaranteed? But Tom—'

Sonny shook his head violently. 'Not Tom! Sorry, I didn't mean to—I mean, the project isn't "try to get your boyfriend into bed with you, and fail", it's "try to turn your best friend into your boyfriend by putting out, and fail". I don't want to interfere with whatever's going on between you and Tom, or not going on, in fact I don't even want to know anything about that. Not my business, right? I thought we got that sorted out. Look, don't put Tom in this picture. Imagine we're doing this before you even met him.'

Jane closed her eyes for a moment, making the effort to take Sonny's last statement at face value, and nodded her head. 'Okay, I think I see.' She opened her eyes again and sized up Sonny. He really didn't mean anything by it, she decided. It was just his devious mind trying to thread a convoluted path through the obstacles to education created by their schooling. 'So I try to get you into bed with me and fail. You're right, no effort. And no risk, either, because you don't even date, right? Which makes it not so impressive to anybody who knows you, but it could sound impressive to somebody who doesn't.'

'You got it.' Sonny gave a sigh of relief, a small one, but not too small to be visible to Jane. He'd been worried about coming out with this idea, but when she'd pushed him he'd trusted her not to take it the wrong way.

She said, 'It is weird, you'll have to agree.'

'It's the weirdness that makes it impressive. Is it too weird for you? We can probably come up with something else.'

'Nah, I don't want to come up with something conventional. What if I try that and I _don't _fail to be conventional? But can we tone down your idea a little for the class report? Let's say I try to turn my best friend into my boyfriend by offering to go out with him and do anything he wants, my treat, no strings, and I fail?'

'See, I arranged your project for you and you've already finished it.'

Jane grinned. 'Thanks again.' She tipped her head to one side and decided it was safe to joke with him. He was still the same Sonny Morgendorffer as ever. 'Come round on Saturday so I can show you my appreciation by taking you out for pizza. I'll be waiting in bed for you with nothing but a sheet on.'

Sonny raised an eyebrow in recognition. 'And I'll tell you to hurry up and get dressed and go downstairs to wait for you.'

* * *

><p>'So how's <em>your <em>"succeeding to fail" assignment going?'

'You should have come with me', Sonny said.

'What, and get up to the armpits in O'Neill's trash?'

'I used a rake. No sense in overdoing it. It's a tip I got from one of those private investigators during that whole business with Barch. I talked with them about their work. I thought it might give me an idea or two for Lyric Lightbody—or maybe some other story, I might have gone as far as I can with her.'

Jane grinned. 'Now I've got an idea for a painting of somebody raking through a pile of trash. I _am _sorry I missed it after all. But did you find anything?'

'No, but it doesn't matter that much. If I was determined not to miss any possible clue, I would have had to get in there up to my armpits, but who wants to do that? Remember, the object of the assignment is to fail in the attempt. But I wish you'd been there to see O'Neill's reaction when he found me at work, because then you could immortalise it. When I told him I was working on his assignment—and what I was doing specifically for his assignment—he looked like a man confronting the mirror and seeing the face of his own stupidity.'

They had reached the door of O'Neill's classroom. Jane looked round at the faces of their classmates and said, 'Doesn't look like the assignment's working out too well for anybody else.'

Sonny shook his head. 'Sometimes I wonder about you. Didn't going through O'Neill's self-esteem class six times tell you anything about what to expect from him?'

* * *

><p>The assignment wasn't working out too well for anybody else.<p>

Some people had taken O'Neill's instructions, attempted something they felt sure they'd never be able to do, and been proved right. Jodie Landon, for example. She'd attempted without success to convince her parents not to cram her summer schedule full of compulsory résumé-building activities. She was not happy to have confirmation for her suspicion that her parents were unmoved by the thought of her dropping dead of exhaustion.

Some people had taken O'Neill's instructions, attempted something they felt sure they'd never be able to do, and been proved wrong. Kevin Thompson, for example (not that there was anything remarkable about his being proved wrong). He'd attempted to perform badly as the quarterback, and it turned out that his remarkable faculty for knowing the moves on the gridiron worked just as well for knowing the losing moves. The mighty Lawndale Lions had been flogged like balky mules, and so had Kevin's image in the eyes of the other players and—when he was dropped from the team—his ego.

When O'Neill saw what he'd done, he blanched. Then he tried to recover, blithering about how failure at the assignment was success and success was failure, or something equally sensible, and about accepting the valleys of life with the peaks—but he didn't seem to convince anybody, not even himself.

Over the next couple of days, naturally, the students more or less recovered from the effects of O'Neill's blundering. After all, it was hardly the first time. Jodie had selected her assignment, as instructed, as something she expected to fail at, so her parents' attitude, while disappointing, was no shock. And Kevin's spirits recovered when 'Mack' Mackenzie persuaded the rest of the football team to give him another chance (his account of O'Neill's stupid assignment had carried instant conviction: many of the players had been taught by O'Neill at one time or another).

O'Neill himself, perhaps just a little surprisingly, was the exception. He turned up to his next class looking as if he'd finally realised the truth about himself, and confirmed it by starting to cry as he told the class that he was a misguided failure who would only do them more damage if they let him lead them astray with more of his drivel. Instead of assigning them more work, he stunned them all by simply asking them to go.

Kevin, the first student to recover, led a cheering stampede from the room.

In the general confusion, Sonny left his notebook behind. When he realised, he went back to collect it before the next period and found O'Neill still sobbing uncontrollably at his desk. After leaving the room, he had an unexpected encounter, on the way to his next class, with Ms Onepu.

'Sonny!' she said. 'Are you well? Is everything _okay_?'

'Fine, thanks', he said.

If she noticed his deliberate brusqueness, she disregarded it. 'Did you just come from Mr O'Neill's class?'

'Yes, and now I have to get to my next one.' He tried to dodge round her, but she just walked along with him.

'You weren't … uh … perturbed, by any unusual behaviour on Mr O'Neill's part?'

Sonny shook his head briefly. 'Not by that, no.'

'So … you did notice it? I knew something was wrong with Mr O'Neill and I'm concerned about the effect on students, especially the more perceptive ones, such as yourself.'

'Weeping fits in the faculty lounge?'

'It's remarkable how insightful you are!' Onepu pressed her hands together. 'It's part of a teacher's responsibility to give proper recognition to the special qualities of every student. But I'm concerned that Mr O'Neill's … _state of mind_ … may be … _reducing_ … his ability to meet his responsibilities to his students. Are you sure it hasn't been a problem for you?'

'Not for me, no.'

'But … your classmates?'

'Oh, I wouldn't worry about that.' _I mean, _Sonny thought, _whatever _Onepu _may do, _I _never worry about my classmates having problems. Besides, it's hard to see how this could make O'Neill any worse in his effect on his students than he was before._

'It's a great relief to my mind to hear you say that! You know how seriously I take the school's responsibilities to its students. I would have tried to talk with Mr O'Neill about it myself, as one colleague to another, but for some reason we don't seem to have the good communications that colleagues should have. I don't understand it, because I know that he's just as deeply committed to the students as I am.'

_And both as deeply committed to the sounds of your respective voices, _Sonny thought.

'That's why I was thinking', Onepu continued, 'that perhaps a student, one like yourself, with your sensitivity and clarity of insight, might be better suited to intervening in Mr O'Neill's … _condition_. I knew it would be wrong to place an extra burden on a student who might already be distressed, but if, as you say, you are not suffering any ill effects, it might be beneficial to you to have this opportunity for personal growth, if you voluntarily wished to take it on. But now that you've put my mind at ease about the effects on Mr O'Neill's students, there's no need to discuss the matter further. I do hope I haven't gone too far already. Don't let me keep you from your next class for another instant, Sonny!'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Actually, Ms Onepu, you've given me a very good idea. Thank you. Sorry, have to rush now.' He hurried away, leaving Onepu to indulge in her outburst of gratification alone.

* * *

><p>'So after school I went round to O'Neill's place and I managed to make him feel better.'<p>

'How?' Jane asked Sonny, speaking through a mouthful of pizza, and then, after swallowing, 'and, much more importantly, why?'

'Oh, I just fed back to him a line based on his own psycho-babble. He was feeling like a failure—right for once—and I told him something about how the whole point of his assignment was to show us that failure isn't the end of the world, and if he believed that he should accept that his own failure wasn't the end of the world.' Sonny grunted. 'I suppose that's even true as far as it goes. Anyway, I managed to make it go far enough to snap O'Neill out of his funk.' Sonny took a bite of his own pizza slice.

'That's how, now tell me why. Don't tell me Onepu inspired you with altruistic benevolence towards O'Neill.'

Sonny shook his head. 'Remember what I said to you about getting tips from those private investigators? All Onepu did was give me the idea for a cover story for getting into O'Neill's apartment, so that I could take another crack at my own "succeeding to fail" assignment.'

'And how did that work out?'

'I don't know yet. I still have to wait for whatever I can pick up from the bug I planted on his phone.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'The F Word' by Rachelle Romberg<strong>_


	45. Happens While Making Other Plans

**Not So Different**

_**45. Happens While Making Other Plans**_

'Sonny?'

What was Sonny Morgendorffer doing here? Out in public? In a crowd of parade spectators? And holding a small child by the hand?

No, he'd dropped the small child's hand when he heard Tom addressing him. But the scene was still one where Sonny didn't fit. He was carrying shopping in a paper bag. Maybe he'd come out specifically to buy whatever it was. But it was a funny time to choose to do that, with the parade on.

Tom had got used to seeing Sonny here and there with Jane, and Sonny had kept to their understanding about how they'd behave in front of Jane. But now Jane wasn't around. She'd been supposed to meet Tom here in front of the pharmacy so they could enjoy the ridiculous horror of the parade together—an activity that probably wasn't Sonny's kind of thing—and now Jane hadn't shown up. Tom wasn't sure what difference that might make to how Sonny behaved. The way Sonny was squinting at him didn't look exactly friendly, although he'd already learned that Sonny's face was hard to read without long practice.

Sonny had made it quite clear to Tom that he wasn't interested in developing any sort of direct interpersonal relationship between the two of them. He had one friend (Jane) and, he said, that was all he wanted. Tom respected that. It was Jane who had caught his attention, Jane that he was interested in getting to know: he hadn't got involved with Jane as an indirect way of making a connection with Sonny. Tom and Sonny had an understanding that would allow things to develop between Tom and Jane however they were going to develop, and that was sufficient. Tom wasn't going to try to bust through the walls that Sonny had surrounded himself with if it would risk that understanding.

Tom couldn't help thinking, though, that it was a pity that Sonny had put up so many barriers around himself. Never mind walls, he conducted his emotional life from an underground bunker encircled by barbed wire and minefields and defended by entrenched machineguns. Because Jane and Sonny were so close, it was impossible to get to know Jane well without getting to know Sonny at least a little, and although a connection with Sonny had not been his objective in taking an interest in Jane, he did think that if Sonny would only open up another path through his emotional fortifications, for somebody other than Jane, there might be worthwhile possibilities for both Sonny and himself. Somebody who could build a friendship with Jane that was so strong should be able to build more than one, and Tom suspected that hiding somewhere inside Sonny there might be a person he'd like to know.

Right now, though, Tom was supposed to be meeting Jane. And right now Sonny was telling him that Jane was waiting for him in front of Drugs 'N Stuff. The _other _pharmacy. Tom explained to Sonny that Jane had just said '_the _pharmacy'. He continued, 'I guess it was just a big misunderstanding.'

'That's what Pol Pot said', was Sonny's response.

'He didn't mean to kill two million people', Tom said. 'He only wanted to scare them.'

Sonny had the deadest pan Tom had ever seen, but Tom could have sworn that he smiled at that for half a moment. Or at least on half of his face.

Tom decided not to push his luck and changed the subject to the identity of the small boy. Sonny explained that he'd once babysat the child, whose name was Tad, and was now helping him to look for his parents. Tom squatted down to introduce himself and to ask Tad's permission to tag along with them. Sonny gave that suggestion a chilly reception, but Tad loved the idea that they could help each other as they all headed back towards Drugs 'N Stuff. Sonny grudgingly gave way, but cast doubt on Tom's chances of finding Jane in the packed crowd.

'It is a stunning array of pod people', Tom said. 'It's times like these I'm glad I don't go to your school.'

'Uh-huh. And I suppose your ivy-choked prep school is any better?' Sonny paused. 'Wait a minute. Was I just defending Lawndale High?'

Tom could tell that Sonny didn't like that idea, but he didn't think Sonny would want to be shielded from the truth, so he replied with a guarded affirmative.

'We never had this conversation', said Sonny.

'What conversation?' Tom said generously.

* * *

><p>Stacy, as usual, had got over-excited, and so she'd handed out all the head shots of the Fashion Club at once. Now they stood on their float with nothing to do but wave, and they were getting tired of it. Tiffany suggested showcasing their charity work. Sandi suggested giving a makeover to a girl from the audience.<p>

'That is such a good idea, Sandi', said Quinn.

Quinn was less pleased with Sandi a moment later when Sandi pointed out 'your relative or whatever' walking behind the float. It was indeed Sonny—with a small boy Quinn recognised as Tad Gupty, and another boy she didn't recognise, probably high-school age, but better-looking than Sonny (although no more stylish). Quinn didn't like having Sonny around her in public at any time, and least of all when she was with the Fashion Club. She knew Sandi would use it against her if she got a chance, or else hold the threat over her head. Quinn urged Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie, who were pulling the float, to speed up. As she did so, she heard Tiffany speak from the back of the float.

'Is that a girl we can make over?'

And then Stacy answered Tiffany.

'Tiffany, Quinn's … uh … relative … is a boy, not a girl.'

'Oh.' Tiffany paused. 'Right.' She paused again. 'So why are three boys trying to get on to our float?'

'Tiffany!' said Sandi. 'I am surprised at you! Have you learned nothing? How can we know that we are upholding the very highest standards of the Fashion Club if we do not have boys running after us?'

'Oh', said Tiffany. 'Right', she added, as Sandi and Stacy moved towards the back of the float, where the three boys were now trying to get aboard. Quinn stared helplessly.

* * *

><p>After Tom, Sonny, and Tad had walked along the parade route for some time without finding Tad's parents, Tom suggested that they'd have a better field of vision—and be more visible themselves—if they hopped on a float.<p>

'One: I don't hop floats', Sonny said, dropping Tad's hand. 'Two: I don't hop.'

Tom tried to persuade Sonny to 'embrace the nightmare', but Sonny insisted that seeing the whole thing as a big joke was Tom's perspective, and Jane's, but not his.

Then Tom saw a change of expression on Sonny's face. Somebody who didn't know Sonny might not have realised it, but Tom had spent enough time with him to see that his expression had turned sour in a way that was different from what it was usually like. Tom turned to see what Sonny was looking at. It was another float going past, with four girls on it, and plenty of free space. He took Tad by the hand and started walking briskly after it. Behind them, he heard Sonny speak.

'I stand corrected', Sonny said. 'This whole thing is a big joke.' Tom wasn't sure what he was talking about, or what this float meant to him, but he _was_ following them.

Tom broke into a trot, taking Tad with him, and then dropped Tad's hand for a moment to hop up onto the tailgate of the float. As soon as he landed, he turned and reached down to help Tad up to join him.

Sonny was jogging towards them, but he seemed half-hearted. 'Wait', he said, 'not that float', but as the float, speeding up, started to gain on him, Tad was on the verge of tears, begging Sonny not to leave him. Sonny must have made a real impression on the boy when he was baby-sitting, and not the kind he usually made on people. Tom could see the expression on Sonny's face changing again in reaction. It showed that he didn't like the situation—he looked more vexed with the world than normal—but he made a surprising concerted effort to catch up, and when Tom reached down to help him aboard, he did not shrink from the proffered assistance.

A moment later, two of the four overdressed girls who made up the payload of the float approached the rear of its podium. Tom noticed that the one with the light brown hair was giving Sonny a surreptitious wave and mouthing a greeting at him, while the one with the dark brown hair drew herself up to her full heels-augmented height and swept both Sonny and himself with an imperious gaze before saying, 'May I ask what you are doing here? This is the Lawndale High School Fashion Club official parade float, not a free bus service for the unfashionable and unpopular.' As she finished this speech, though, he saw her partly belie her tone of voice by raising one eyebrow at Sonny in a signal of—complicity, could it be?

Sonny wasn't answering, though, just skewering him, Tom, with a look. So Tom spoke up.

'Tad, here, has lost his parents', he said. 'We thought if we got up higher there'd be a better chance to see them, or for them to see him.'

The girl spoke again, in what was obviously her idea of a regal manner. 'As Fashion Club President, I am pleased to put the club at the service of such a charitable purpose. Stacy' (she turned to address the second girl) 'will you please assist Tad to get up?' She looked back at Tom and Sonny. 'You two may remain on the tailgate.' She turned away from them again as the girl called Stacy reached down to help Tad up. Tad seemed to hesitate for a moment but then called out, 'Quinn! Have you seen my parents?'

As the four girls clustered around Tad, Tom turned back to Sonny and said, 'Your school has a _Fashion _Club?'

'Vice-President: Quinn Morgendorffer', Sonny said flatly.

'Morgendorffer?'

'We come from two different worlds, regular and popular. Despite this, my parents insist that we're siblings. But Quinn prefers to regard me as a cousin. A distant cousin. Or maybe an orphan that her parents have taken in out of charity. Or something.'

'Is that why she gave you that odd look?'

'Odd look?' said Sonny. 'Oh, no. Quinn's not the one who looked at me. Quinn's the redhead.' As Sonny continued speaking, Tom took a quick glance at the podium to see which one was the redhead. 'The one who spoke to us is Club President Sandi Griffin. She and Quinn share a common dedication to the pursuit of popularity and the manipulation of boys, so they're closest associates and deadliest rivals. I've had the occasional brief alliance of convenience with Sandi against Quinn, and she probably sees me as one of the boys she manipulates. That would be what you saw.'

'And the other one?'

'The other one?'

'Um … Stacy? I thought she recognised you too.' Tom thought she more than recognised Sonny, but Sonny's reaction made him cautious.

'They all recognise me. But, two separate worlds, one regular and one popular.'

Tom decided to change the subject. 'They seem to be getting on with Tad, anyway.'

'A spick-and-span angel like him? For them he'd be a fashion accessory.'

'Well, he seems to be okay with it.'

'He should be comfortable with Quinn. He used to shine her shoes while his sister braided her hair. She was their regular babysitter, I just substituted for her once.'

Tom gave a nod of understanding. 'I thought babysitting was an unlikely occupation for you.'

'I didn't like kids even when I was a kid. But I needed an excuse not to have to go to the "focus on teens" session of my parents' couples' workshop, and Quinn had already tried to bribe me to sit in for her, because she had a date for that night with the most popular boy in the school.'

Tom nodded again. 'Tad seems to have a positive memory of the experience.'

Sonny shrugged. 'Longest night of my life. You wouldn't believe how the parents had those kids mesmerised. I tried to reprogram them out of sheer desperation, but by the time Jane came round to rescue me I was at the end of my rope. She helped me out and I actually thought we were getting somewhere, but now I think Tad's reverted to the parental indoctrination.'

'Sounds like you've got quite a story to tell there.'

Sonny's face twitched. 'You could ask Jane to fill you in on the details. And speaking of Jane, sorry you haven't managed to hook up with her. Why don't you hop down and head back to Drugs 'N Stuff? I'm sure I can cope here without you.'

'I'm sure you can. But I figure that if Tad's got a better chance of finding his parents from here, I've got a better chance of finding Jane. She may have drifted away from Drugs 'N Stuff by now, after I didn't show up there.'

'In that case, maybe I should get down now. Tad should be fine with Quinn, and you'll be here to keep an eye on him too.' Sonny raised the paper bag in his arms. 'I'm supposed to be fetching this to my father as soon as possible. And if I happen to run into Tad's parents, or Jane, I can tell them where you are.'

'Quinn!' They heard Tad shouting. 'It's my parents! There, look! Sonny, look, it's my parents! They've seen me! They're waving at me!'

Quinn and Stacy led Tad back to Tom and Sonny, and then Tom helped Tad and Sonny as they all scrambled down from the float. A moment later Tad's parents and sister joined them. Explanations were exchanged and Tad's parents thanked Sonny repeatedly before taking their children off to find a good spot to view the parade.

'If you find Jane, say hi for me', Sonny said to Tom after Tad and his family had gone. 'I've got to get this home to my father.'

'Sure you don't want to hang around in case one of the floats crashes?'

'It's tempting … but no. If that happens, I guess Jane will take photos. Anyway, my father really is waiting on me.' Sonny turned away and in a moment was lost in the crowd.

'Good luck!' Tom called after him, but he couldn't tell whether Sonny heard.

_I guess I didn't actually foul that up_, he thought, as he moved off again along the parade route. He was still thinking about Sonny a few minutes later when he finally found Jane. She upbraided him for his tardiness.

'I've been looking for you', he said. 'You said to meet at the pharmacy and I didn't realise I was at the wrong one until Sonny came past and told me you were at Drugs 'N Stuff.'

'Sonny?'

'He was on an emergency errand for his dad …'

'Yeah, I know about that', Jane said.

'… and then he found a lost child. Name of Tad, Sonny said you knew him.'

'Tad Gupty? I wonder how he's doing nowadays.'

'Well, we found his parents in the end, but first we went up and down the parade route looking for them. And for you, too.'

'We?' said Jane. 'You and Sonny? Together? And yet, no torn clothes? No blood? No missing organs?'

'No, we got along … pretty well. I think. It's hard to tell, with him. But I guess you know that.'

'Well, let's get some pizza and compare battle scars. Where's Sonny now?'

'Gone home to his dad.'

'Oh.' Jane shrugged. 'Too bad.'

'Yeah', said Tom. 'Too bad.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'The Invitation' by Anne D Bernstein, 'Pinch Sitter' by Anne D Bernstein, and 'I Loathe A Parade' by Dan Vebber<strong>_


	46. Knowing Each Other

**Not So Different**

_**46. Knowing Each Other**_

Sonny and Quinn had, naturally enough, opposite problems.

Their father was going out of town to an 'Eatertainment' Conference (as the son of a marketing consultant, Sonny was long-numbed to this particular kind of linguistic abuse), and he'd managed to persuade their mother to take the weekend off and go along for the trip, leaving Quinn alone with Sonny. Characteristically, Quinn's first plan had been to escape by going out on a string of dates but, equally characteristically, she hadn't had enough sense to keep this quiet, and so their mother had firmly prohibited dating for the duration of the parental absence. As a compensatory concession, she had offered them each permission to invite one friend over for company. Sonny could not determine whether she sincerely believed that her children would experience the parental absence as a lack of company, but it was that offer which had created Sonny and Quinn's problems.

Quinn's problem was having a choice of friends. At first she'd invited Stacy to sleep over, but with her usual lack of tactical sense she'd done so in front of the whole Fashion Club, and Sandi had effortlessly guilt-tripped her into widening the invitation to all of them.

Sonny's problem was not having a choice of friends. He only had Jane. That would have been all right, except that she and Tom were going out bowling with Tom's friends on Saturday night. When Sonny and Jane had witnessed Quinn's interaction with the Fashion Club, he had hoped that he'd be able to get away from their descent on the Morgendorffer residence by going over to Jane's, but when that escape route was cut off he didn't have another one.

Sitting next to his father on the living-room sofa, Sonny discovered in the conference brochure an opportunity to extract some small compensation. The venue was next to the Museum of Medical Oddities, and he persuaded his father to buy him a skull-crusher from the gift shop. Meanwhile, his mother finished a telephone conversation with her boss and announced that a lawsuit which had been thought settled now wasn't, so she couldn't go to the conference with Jake after all.

'But Helen, I need you', Sonny's father whined. 'The tickets are non-refundable.'

Sonny wondered why his father was emphasising that point. Was that, as opposed to the opportunity to spend time with his wife, the thing that carried most weight with him? Or did he think it was the point that would carry most weight with her? His parents' relationship puzzled him a little—on the rare occasions when he let himself think about it at all. Presumably both of them were getting _something _out of it …

Sonny's thoughts swerved promptly from the subject of his parents' marriage and back to the immediate surroundings. His mother had left the room and his father had started ranting.

'The firm's counting on me', he said in an exaggerated imitation of his wife's voice, and then, reverting to his own, 'God forbid _I _should count on anyone! Little Jakey has to learn to be self-sufficient. It's weak to depend on other people!' Then his voice changed again to what Sonny knew (from listening to his father rant in the past) was an imitation of the late 'Mad Dog' Morgendorffer, Jake's own father, a man Sonny counted himself fortunate never to have met: 'Hey, you don't mind spending the holidays in the barracks, do you son? The janitor will keep an eye on ya.' He wound up in his own voice again, 'Merry Christmas, Dad... in Hell!', shaking his fist in the symbolic direction of Sheol before collapsing into a fit of weeping.

Sonny looked towards his sobbing progenitor, then away, and then back towards him again, before his attention was caught by Quinn coming downstairs, deep in conversation on the cordless telephone and oblivious to the pathetic scene she was passing through. She was talking about all the CDs she had to play on the weekend, so he figured she was talking with one of her Fashion Club cronies—or it could have been a conference call with all of them.

Quinn's conversation made Sonny very much not want to think about the weekend. It would be bad enough living through it. He picked up the remote control and switched on _Sick, Sad World_.

It didn't look like one of their better episodes. He switched it off again and looked back at his father. Two minutes ago the man had been looking forward to _his _weekend, meeting 'franchising genius' Terry Perry Barlow and maybe even landing him as a client, but now he was distraught, as memories flooded back of desertions and abandonments from childhood on. Sonny had seen and heard it all before, of course. He knew his father would survive the weekend.

He knew he'd _survive_ the weekend himself, come to that.

'Um, Dad', he said, 'I'd go with you, but …'

_But what?_

Sonny's father kept wailing over his memories. 'I'd go with you, but the dog needs his nails clipped. Happy wedding, son!'

The balance was tipped by Quinn, who shuttled back through the room, still on the phone, her conversation now having moved on from music to be played to television to be watched.

'And then we can watch the _Waif_ special: "Before They Were Supermodels".'

' "Before They Were Supermodels"?' Sonny repeated. He sighed, and then offered to accompany his father to the conference—if they adjusted the itinerary to incorporate a visit to the 'Sliced Man' at the Museum of Medical Oddities.

His father snapped up the offer. 'You're on, boy!' he said, and only then, 'Sliced Man? Ugh.'

* * *

><p>Jake had just finished brushing his teeth when Helen, who was already in bed, called out to him.<p>

'You know, honey, you could really turn this change of plans into something very positive.'

Helen had promised him! When she cancelled on him at the last minute, she'd promised to make it up to him by buying him a brand-new set of golf clubs! He came out of the ensuite bathroom telling her that she wasn't getting out of that.

But that wasn't her idea at all. She thought the trip could be a chance for him to get to know Sonny better.

'Aw, Helen, do I have to?'

'Jake!'

'But I'm scared', he said, reflexively adopting the childish tone of voice that her rebukes often elicited from him. She didn't say any more, which was just fine by him, and he didn't look at her to see her non-verbal reaction. He didn't tell her what he was scared of, or why.

Jake knew perfectly well that his son was smarter than he was. Much smarter. Probably much _much_ smarter. Could anybody, without Sonny's cooperation—without Sonny's independent initiative—penetrate the barriers he'd put around himself? Not Jacob Morgendorffer, Senior, that was for sure. He probably couldn't force his way in even if he wanted to try, and he certainly couldn't outsmart his boy.

One of the things he was scared of was that Sonny might outsmart himself.

Jake slid down under the covers. He rolled from one side to the other, trying to relax.

Sonny might know a lot, he might know more than Jake, but he didn't know everything, even if he thought he did. He didn't know some of the things that Jake had learned at military school.

Jake's breathing became more regular. He'd done one thing right, not sending his boy to military school. Sonny had said the same. Military school! Where a boy could get stranded halfway up a climbing rope and the drill instructor could leave him there all night, after encouraging all the other cadets to laugh! He'd been scared! It was a nightmare!

* * *

><p>Sonny's father was exclaiming at the benefits of business class, but his transparent efforts to silence his own fear of heights were not a success. Sonny tentatively suggested that too many complimentary cocktails might not be the best solution either. Jake looked for another distraction, and picked up Terry Perry Barlow's book again. He found a story in it about how Barlow had saved his entire ballooning crew in an ice storm by climbing up the ropes and opening the rip panel with his teeth.<p>

Sonny said, 'I just performed a similar act of bravery on this bag of peanuts.'

As they sat there eating their snacks, Sonny noticed the glances his father was casting at him. He was more used to getting looks like that from his mother, mostly when she was thinking about trying to 'bond' with him. His father did that too, but not nearly as often. He hoped that wasn't what was going through his father's mind now. The last time he'd been scheduled for a parental 'bonding day', he'd had to get Jane and Tom to rescue him. He'd prefer not to have to do that too often.

'You know', his father said, 'the peanut really is a second-class nut.'

That was better than Sonny had hoped.

'Now cashews', Jake continued, 'those are what the big guys eat—the CEOs.' Maybe this chat was supposed to be a distraction from his acrophobia. Sonny figured that was something that stemmed from trauma in his father's early life, probably at the military school 'Mad Dog' had condemned him to. Traumatic experiences can happen to anybody. The heartbreaking part was that his father was afraid to be afraid. Should Sonny open up to his father, who had never even dreamed of sending Sonny to military school? Sonny owed an unassessable debt just for that.

He picked something out of his bag of nuts. 'How did a salted goldfish get in here? Weird.'

* * *

><p>Sonny's father's volatile temper flared up when no reservation in the name of Morgendorffer could be found at the front desk of the conference hotel. The altercation was, thankfully, interrupted by the arrival of other guests, who hailed Jake.<p>

'Jodie's parents?' Sonny said. He remembered that his parents must have met the Landons when he and Jodie were both invited to Grove Hills.

Mr and Mrs Landon and Sonny's father exchanged greetings, and then Mrs Landon also greeted Sonny, and told Jake how nice it was that he'd brought his son. Jake explained that Helen had had to stay behind at the last minute because something had come up at work. With an admiring expression and an enthusiastic pump of the arm, Mr Landon said, 'Real go-getter, huh?'

This apparently innocuous remark set his wife off in a way that could only be explained by some past bad history between them. She seemed to take it as implying a contrast with her, as if she were taking a back seat in a way that a real 'go-getter' like Sonny's mother never would. She assertively insisted that she'd be returning to work as soon as Evan, evidently a younger brother of Jodie's, was in daycare.

Mr Landon's response made it sound as if that, too, was an old argument, in which he'd already made his wife aware that he wasn't going to agree to his son going into daycare. He compared it to being thrown to the wolves. Perhaps it was by some established agreement that they let the matter drop. Mr Landon suggested that the four of them get together again for a drink before the reception, and then he and his wife (whose names, Sonny had learned, were Andrew and Michele) headed off to their penthouse. Meanwhile Sonny's father had to turn back to the desk to be offered accommodation—for people 'not sensitive to the sounds or smells of a kitchen exhaust fan'. He covered his face with both hands.

But penthouse or no penthouse, Sonny knew which father he'd rather have.

He was still thinking about it when they were in a corner of the room with the Landons at the reception. Would he rather have the father who was being patronised or the one who was doing the patronising? When Mr Landon suggested that the 'small fry' at the reception, although of no interest to himself, could still be suitable for Jake if he wanted to 'drum up' some business, Sonny asked whether he should 'get the tom-toms'.

_Mrs _Landon laughed, but Mr Landon's attention had been caught by a familiar face, the same man Sonny's father had been hoping to see, Terry Perry Barlow. 'Haven't seen him since Entepreneurfest 3000', Mr Landon said. 'Did you know he saved his balloon crew's lives during an ice storm?'

'And I bet he never talks about it', said Sonny, hoping that Mrs Landon at least would appreciate the line. The two men kept admiring Barlow no matter what Sonny said, and then a moment later the entrepreneur himself strode up to them and greeted Andrew Landon enthusiastically, initiating a little male-dominance posturing ritual. After that, Michele Landon was introduced into the conversation, and identified herself by her former corporate executive position. Terry Perry Barlow asked about her current employment.

'Actually, I'm taking a brief hiatus. We recently had a son.'

'One of the unfortunate side effects of Viagra.' Barlow laughed. 'Just kidding. Got a pair of newborns myself. Pay their mother a nice settlement, too.'

Sonny spoke up. 'Mr Landon—sir—I just want you to know how impressed I am by your response to this.' Everybody turned to look at Sonny inquiringly as he continued. 'When we were at the hotel reception earlier and Mrs Landon talked about her plans for going back to work and you said no son of yours was going into daycare—well, I know myself, sir, how important father–son bonding is, and how important it is to start early, but it's not every father who'd be prepared to follow your example and take time off work to spend at home looking after his pre-school child.' Before anybody had fully taken in what he was saying, he continued, 'Mrs Landon, ma'am, would you like to check out the potato salad swan?'

'Lead the way', came the reply and they moved off together. Sonny didn't hear a word from any of the three men before they were out of earshot.

As they reached the buffet table, Mrs Landon said, 'Jodie told me that you were smart.'

'After we worked on that economics project together? She might have told you a lot of things about me', Sonny said indifferently, as he picked up some samples of the food.

'Well, she did say—'

'Nothing good, I hope, ma'am.'

'Uh … I think you don't need to call me "ma'am".' She started helping herself to the buffet.

'In that case, Mrs Landon', Sonny said, 'what do you think of these cheddar cheese biscotti?'

'They're awful.'

Sonny looked around the room and saw that Mr Landon had left the corner and was greeting somebody new. 'So is the sight of grown men trying to out-shake each other', he said.

'Excuse me, Sonny. I'm going to retrieve my husband before he breaks his hand and I have to dress two babies every morning.' She moved off, leaving Sonny in his favoured condition of solitude for a few minutes, until his father came up to him to let him know that he (Sonny) had been personally selected for an audience with Terry Perry Barlow.

'Can you believe it?' his father said.

'There's so much about this day I can't believe', said Sonny.

Then they reached Barlow, who wanted to ask 'Buster' (was that what he thought Sonny was called, or was it just a way of covering for not noticing his name?) whether alligator wrestling would get him into a restaurant. Jake expressed enthusiasm for the idea (he must still be buttering the man up in hopes of milking him for some business), but Sonny had to think for a moment about his answer.

'That depends. Is there a restaurant next door with cockfights?'

Terry Perry Barlow laughed. Cruelly and unfairly, he told 'Buster' that he was 'sharp' and—contradictorily—that the two of them were alike. Sonny's father sycophantically agreed. Then Barlow suggested that the three of them sneak off from the conference for an early-morning balloon ride before the keynote address.

'Way up in the air?' said Sonny's father. 'Sounds great …', he lied, then laughed unconvincingly. 'Yeah, that'll be fun', he said. 'Right, Sonny?'

'More fun than a barrel of alligators.'

This time Terry Perry Barlow caught the name. 'Sonny?' he said, and shrugged. Then he told them to meet him at five o'clock, and left.

Sonny reminded his father about acrophobia.

'Oh, uh', his father said, 'that was a long time ago', but Sonny could see that he was having a flashback. Maybe the environment of the reception deterred him from descending openly into a ranting complaint. Instead, he took Sonny back to his room to get a good night's sleep so that he'd be ready to be woken early in the morning for the balloon ride.

Sonny reminded his father that he was scheduled to see a salivary gland tumour at the Museum of Medical Oddities the next day. But Jake still saw the balloon ride as his big break, the chance to land Terry Perry Barlow as a client for his marketing consultancy. And he was thinking of himself and Sonny as a team.

'Very much like Fagin and the Artful Dodger, without the law-breaking', Sonny said.

His father changed tack, from pathetically imploring Sonny for assistance to pathetically deprecating himself as somebody who had no right to expect Sonny's assistance. He guiltily berated himself, as he sat down on Sonny's bed, for not even trying to find out about Sonny's 'dreams and fears'.

As Sonny sat down on a chair, he said, struggling to conceal his apprehension under a smokescreen of his usual irony, 'My biggest fear right now is that I'll wake up and this conversation won't be a dream.'

He'd been right to be apprehensive. His father wanted to talk about bonding. For a moment Sonny felt that maybe he wanted to do that as well. Then he remembered the regular experience of sitting with his father in the kitchen, both reading the paper and not talking. He asked his father whether he remembered that too.

'Is this a trick question?'

Sonny didn't know whether he was reassured or saddened by that response, but he went on, 'Maybe our father-son relationship has reached that rare level where we no longer have to go through the motions of empty conversation. _That's _bonding.'

Was he telling the truth? He was telling part of the truth, he thought, but was he telling the whole truth? His father seemed ambivalent too, giving Sonny a look that Sonny couldn't quite read. Then he said something that Sonny could read only too well: it was Sonny's mother who had told his father that there were things about Sonny that Jake didn't know.

Sonny made a decision.

He said, 'Six and a half B'.

His father gave him a comfortingly familiar look of puzzlement, at which he elaborated.

'My shoe size.'

'Oh', said Jake, and then reciprocated. 'Ten D.'

'Okay, now that we know each other's deepest secrets, I say it's time to hit the sack.' Sonny sighed. 'And I'll see you at 4:30.'

His father was thrilled, without complication.

* * *

><p>The next morning they assembled at the balloon launch site, where Terry Perry Barlow's assistant was readying the balloon. Barlow asked Jake for his view on possible routes for the flight, and Jake opted for 'whatever is more bold and exciting'.<p>

Sonny said, 'I hear they have a bold and exciting brunch back at the hotel.'

At that moment the balloonist approached them to announce that everything was ready, and was seriously displeased to find that Sonny and his father represented the only crew Barlow had brought for the flight. He'd already been unhappy about the look of the clouds, so now he informed them that the flight was off. Barlow was not prepared to allow anybody else to make that decision, and they exchanged threats: Barlow, that he would end the career of Arno (the assistant's name), and Arno, that he would expose the truth, that he and not Barlow was the one who had carried out that daring rescue by ripping the balloon open with his teeth.

'I sold my soul to wet-nurse the whiny billionaire', Arno continued his complaint, 'and somebody else balloons around the world first.' He shook both fists in the air. 'Oh, Denmark, how I have failed you.'

Sonny had a suggestion. 'You could still be the first to balloon around the world twice.'

'The little boy is right', said Arno perceptively. 'I shall do it.' He looked Barlow in the eye. 'Beginning now, I quit.'

Terry Perry Barlow was not discouraged by Arno's departure. He simply told Jake to take charge of the burner. When Jake was anxious at first, Barlow made a profoundly unpersuasive motivational speech. At least, Sonny found it profoundly unpersuasive. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it worked on his father.

'I'm not afraid of you, you clouds that are looking an awful lot like Dad's face right now!' Sonny's father lied as he climbed into the gondola. 'Let's balloon!'

Barlow joined Sonny's father and invited Sonny to do the same.

'Gee, I don't think so', said Sonny. 'While I love a good air disaster as much as the next person, I was hoping my father and I would both be around long enough for him to squander my inheritance on telemarketing scams and digitalis.'

As Sonny began to walk away, both men called after him, but he reiterated his refusal 'to have anything to do with an unmanageable bag of hot air … or his balloon'.

A second defiance from an inferior was enough for Terry Perry Barlow. He climbed out of the gondola, abandoning the ballooning plan for sailing.

Sonny's father wore a big grin of relief, but he feigned disappointment. Sonny wasn't sure whose benefit that was supposed to be for. His? His father's own? Before he could think it through, his father tried to climb out of the gondola and instead accidentally broke the tether rope. He cried out in shock as the balloon started to rise.

Sonny didn't want anything to happen to his father. He moved after him helplessly, but suddenly, to his surprise, his father was exultant.

'Don't worry, Sonny, it's beautiful up here! I'm not afraid! I finally know what it is to conquer my fear! Nothing can stop me now!'

He was still laughing when the balloon crashed into a tree.

* * *

><p>Sonny was surprised again by how little time, and how little trouble, the rescue and the treatment of his father's injuries took. As they checked out of the hotel he told his father he was sorry about the way things had worked out, but his father said that he was fine, or even better. Conquering his childhood fear of heights had given him a new jolt of confidence. In fact, he said he was not afraid of anything, and he owed it to Sonny.<p>

'Well', said Sonny, 'we still have a few hours before we're due at the airport …'

And at the Museum of Medical Oddities, Jacob Morgendorffer, Senior, learned anew the meaning of fear.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Of Human Bonding' by Anne D Bernstein<strong>_


	47. Seeing More Than Some Would Like

**Not So Different**

_**47. Seeing More Than Some Would Like**_

'Which animal would you rather be: a dog, a seal, or a lion?'

'How about a bat?'

Sonny was making an effort to complete a questionnaire, or at any rate simulating an effort to complete a questionnaire, and Jane was making an effort to help him, or at any rate simulating an effort to help him. As 'bat' was not one of the options offered for the 'choose an animal' question, she told him to write it in. He explained that he had to give a brief justification for his choice.

Jane's suggestion was 'I've always wanted to sleep upside down and spread rabies'.

'You know what', Sonny said, 'I like that, but I'm going to put it under "Career Goals". My choice of animal is going to be "salamander".'

Jane paused in her task of adjusting the webcam she was attaching to her computer, and turned to look at Sonny. 'And what's your justification for that?'

'A, some of the stories about salamanders are so strange as to be impossible, and yet some people believe them; B, salamanders have the ability to generate material which makes them repulsive to predators; C, they have a remarkable capacity to recover from physical injury.'

Jane gave him a look he recognised. She was thinking of a picture. But all she said was, 'I thought it was supposed to be a brief sentence.'

'Only because these people are lazy. They're getting paid to read this stuff, which is more than I can say. It's not my fault if they can't be bothered to do their job properly.'

'They' were the staff at 'Quiet Ivy' ('Renewal and Rejuvenation for the Spirit and Soul', or so their brochure said). Vitale, Davis, Horowitz, Riordan, Schrecter, Schrecter, and Schrecter were paying for Helen Morgendorffer and her whole family to go there. It was part of the process by which the firm 'assessed' potential future partners. Sonny, Quinn, Jake, and Helen were all expected to complete questionnaires so that the staff could get to know them before they arrived (Helen's version) and (Sonny's version) know who to make into a drone and who just to kill outright.

Sonny began to think that his version was uncannily insightful when the Morgendorffers' car arrived at Quiet Ivy and was immediately surrounded by half a dozen staff members in white coats. 'Uh-oh', he said. 'Four flew into the cuckoo's nest.'

As they got out of the car, Sonny's mother introduced the whole family, but it was Sonny the white coats zoomed in on. When his mother asked for an explanation, the lead representative of the Combine handed her a clipboard with Sonny's questionnaire.

'Favourite pastime: resurrection?' She glared at Sonny.

He averted his gaze and said, 'I also enjoy making the lame see, the fat hear, and the bald dance.'

The staff wanted to put Sonny under 'intensive observation', at which Quinn commented, 'it's about time'.

'Wait a minute.' Sonny's father glared and put his arm around Sonny's shoulders. 'There's nothing wrong with my boy.'

'Yeah', said Quinn, 'he's always like this.'

'Quinn!' said their mother sharply, before trying to provide some reassurance. 'Our son has an eccentric sense of humour, but he's perfectly fine.'

Sonny tried to dissuade the posse from paying any attention to her (and thus to keep the ball in play) on the ground that she was one of 'the Gamma People', but it was too late. They walked away, although Sonny was encouraged to see that they were definitely disappointed at having to spare him.

After this opening skirmish, the Morgendorffers were briefly left alone in the building. Sonny found a bank of computers with Internet connections and logged on to Jane's webcam.

Did he feel guilty about intruding voyeuristically into his best friend's life? Maybe. But how else was he going to pass the time? Jane had told him that Jane-Cam was a public service, providing comfort to lonely Web-surfers and ensuring that her time on Earth was not wasted—and a public service that required practically no effort. As he'd said at the time, a noble cause and one that suited Jane well. Who was he to deny her function? And what lonely Web-surfer could benefit more from her service than he could?

He would have felt less discomfort and more benefit if he'd been doing something different from looking deep into her mouth while she flossed her teeth. But he'd learned well that sometimes in life you had to take what you can get. And at least her mouth wasn't open quite wide enough to show _all _her fillings. He didn't feel ready for a close view of her uvula.

Suddenly she stopped flossing and shut her mouth as if she'd only just remembered Jane-Cam.

'Hello, Sonny.' A white-coated young man with a French accent had come up behind him unobserved as his attention was focussed on the screen. 'I'm your one-on-one counsellor. Is that your girlfriend?'

'I don't have a girlfriend. I just like to talk to the computer sometimes, because there's nobody else since the air-conditioner left home.'

'You know, Sonny, people often use humour as a barrier to prevent others from trying to get too close.'

'Is that right', Sonny said, looking the man up and down. 'Does it ever _work_.'

'What are you trying to hide?'

'Nothing.' Sonny closed his eyes for a moment. 'I love my mother very much and feel that she'd make an excellent law partner.' He stood up and turned away from the man. 'Oh dear, I think I hear my ride.' He started to walk away, but the counsellor, not to be deterred, interrupted him.

'Sonny, why don't we have a nice talk?'

Sonny turned and looked at the man.

'Why don't we have a nice talk?' He scratched behind his ear. 'You'd like to know why?' He stopped scratching. 'I think I could tell you something about that. In a way, it's because I know a little about the psychological life-cycle of the bully.'

The man put on a 'concerned' face. 'Have you had some experience with bullying, Sonny? Would you like to talk about it in my office?'

'No, not really.' Sonny sighed. 'But I guess I don't have much real choice, do I?'

'Sonny, have you considered that you might get something valuable out of this experience if you give it a chance?'

Sonny looked him up and down again. 'I suppose we'll just have to put that on the list for talking about in your office as well.' He gestured exaggeratedly for the busybody to lead the way.

In the counsellor's private office, he ushered Sonny to a seat on the couch and then lowered himself into one of the chairs.

'Now, you wanted to tell me something about bullying.'

'Actually', Sonny said, 'I said that I could, not that I wanted to, but never mind. What I was thinking about was the way that a bunch of little kids will start at a school, and some of them will get picked on by bullies who take their lunch money. Then they all get older, and the bullies leave the school, and the little kids who were bullied turn into the big kids, and there's always one or two of them who also turn into bullies and start taking lunch money from some of the new little kids. And the reason all this is relevant is that that's how it works at my mother's firm, too, except that what they're taking away from people is not tangible like lunch money. That's what sending people here before they'll consider them for partnership is about. They're sending my mother here to make her suffer because that's what was done to them before they could get to be partners. It's their way of trying to recoup their psychic losses. It's got nothing to do with any actual benefit to the firm or any genuine assistance in selecting the right people for partnerships. But they have to believe it does, or at least pretend that they do, to keep the whole thing going. And that's where you people here come in. Your job, which they pay you to keep doing, is to help them maintain the charade.

'And that', said Sonny, brushing his hands against each other in a 'dusting off' gesture, 'is why I don't think we can have a nice talk and I don't expect to get anything valuable out of this experience. I'm sure that if you put your mind to it you can fake up something for your report that will satisfy your superiors here and my mother's firm, and that way we can both stop wasting each other's time. I mean, seriously, what am _I _supposed to be here for? To help my mother get that partnership? Or are you just itching to analyse me and discover a subconscious desire to sabotage her? Thanks, I'd rather not know about that. They want to grade my mother on her family life before they decide whether to make her a partner? What happens after that, does she have to "make her bones"?' He paused to look straight at his 'counsellor'. 'Are you going to tell me that people often use sarcasm as a barrier to prevent others from trying to get too close. Does that ever work.'

The counsellor looked at Sonny appraisingly. 'Do you have any suggestions, then, about things I could "fake up", as you put it, for my report?'

'I told you, I love my mother very much and I think she'd make an excellent law partner.'

'And do you have any thoughts about what sort of report would encourage her firm to give her a partnership?'

Sonny drew his brow down for a moment. 'That her tireless dedication to her job in no way impairs her relationship with her family?' He shrugged. 'The truth is that Mom appears to be filled with resentment at being made to work so hard, but the reality obscured behind that is her guilt that she enjoys nothing more than working so hard.' He sighed. 'And as for the rest of the family, what Dad feels guilty about is being less driven than Mom. But he thinks the guilt feelings are just as wrong as the lack of drive, so he ends up hiding everything behind a smokescreen of cluelessness. My sister wears superficiality like a suit of armour, because she's afraid of looking inside and finding absolutely nothing. And I'm so defensive that I actively work to make people dislike me so that it will be less painful when they do.' He stood up. 'Is that enough for you to be going on with? May I have permission to go now? And please remember that if you tell anybody anything I have said I will deny everything, and I'm very good at it.'

'Tell me, Sonny. Have you ever been hypnotised?'

Before they could pursue that dispiriting line of inquiry any further, Quinn wandered into the room to complain about Sonny getting 'the French guy' (Quinn loved accents, or at least French ones). Sonny stood up, happy to change places, but the counsellor was irked and asked Quinn to explain who she was.

'I'm Quinn. Sonny's … trainer.'

Sonny said, 'Now, that's healthy.'

The counsellor, apparently (and disturbingly) accepted Quinn's presence as a spectator as he returned to his effort to hypnotise Sonny. However, pleasingly, it was Quinn and not Sonny who lapsed into a trance. When the counsellor said, 'At the count of ten, you will tell me everything you're feeling with no resistance', it was she who immediately started blathering.

When it was all over, Sonny did wonder whether Quinn had _really _been in a hypnotic trance or just putting on some kind of act. He felt that he didn't know enough about hypnotism to be sure what kind of difference it made, but he knew enough about Quinn to know how hard it was for her _ever_ to keep her mouth shut.

The counsellor thought Quinn must be experiencing a 'past-life regression'. Sonny would concede only the 'regression' part. Quinn might think she was Cleopatra, but Sonny doubted that Cleopatra had ever told Caesar his butt looked big in a toga, never mind the part of Quinn's story in which Cleopatra invented all her own beauty products. Maybe the counsellor, like Quinn, had a sketchier and more distorted impression of history than Sonny. But Sonny had to give him credit for what he said next.

'Sonny, I was afraid you had some rather deep-seated problems. But I must say, you're remarkably well-adjusted … considering.'

As Quinn blathered on, Sonny stood up.

'At the count of ten', he said, 'I will snap my fingers … and hopefully remember none of this.'

* * *

><p>Sonny's one-on-one counsellor didn't bother him after their session with Quinn, and he was able to go back to the computer lounge and log on to Jane-Cam again. He wished he hadn't. It was more or less bearable watching Jane starting work on a painting of a Sonnymander, but then Trent walked into shot scratching his rear, unaware of his exposure through Jane-Cam, because Jane had insisted on nobody else's knowing about it.<p>

Sonny felt himself flush in involuntary sympathy. Although he wasn't himself the one unwittingly displayed clawing at his backside, he felt as if he were transfixed by a pin like a butterfly in a collector's glass case.

'Don't pick your nose', he said, staring helplessly. 'Don't pick your nose.'

The charm was broken by Quinn, who came in looking for 'Jean-Michel' (the French-accented counsellor). Her intrusion enabled Sonny to break away. He logged off, stood up, and went over to the bookshelves to browse.

But though he stalled around with the books for quite a while, in the end Sonny couldn't help himself. He was drawn back to Jane-Cam. This time Jane and Tom were sitting on her bed, watching television. Sonny could only see the back of the set, so he didn't know what program was on. He could tell when Jane used the remote to change channels, though. They must not be very engrossed. Maybe they'd start doing something else instead of watching television.

Sonny examined his conscience and decided that he felt bad about watching his best friend with her boyfriend. He kept watching

Jane and Tom were talking about something, possibly something on the television screen, and then Tom stood up, turned to face Jane, and began playing air guitar. Then, worse, he began gyrating his hips.

'Oh no', said Sonny, his face slackening.

Tom continued shaking his stern at the camera. Sonny covered his face with both hands, then spread his fingers to peek through them, then closed one eye and half-closed the other, still getting a squinting glimpse. He was flushing, too, harder than he had when watching Trent. He couldn't watch, but he couldn't look away.

'Please make it stop', he said.

Some of the other people in the room started grouping themselves behind Sonny's back. The realisation that there was a wider audience for Tom's display shocked Sonny back to something approaching reality. He scrambled for perspective.

'Oh look dear', he said, 'the Kravitzes are here.'

Almost as if he'd heard, Tom turned round and stared horror-struck into the webcam, which he'd obviously been unaware of up to that point. After a moment his expression changed to a more productive fury as he turned on Jane. She stood up from the bed and lifted her arms defensively. Whatever she said did not appear to mollify Tom, who stormed out of shot. Jane picked up a pair of scissors and rapidly approached the camera, and a moment later there was nothing but static, as if the cable had been cut.

'Wow', said a cluelessly gawking bystander, 'what show was that?'

Sonny wasn't sure what to do next with Jane-Cam cut off, and unfortunately the staff at Quiet Ivy had an idea for him. They corralled all the Morgendorffers in the dining room with one of the counsellors, who wanted to suggest that 'we' (meaning, of course, the Morgendorffers and by no means she herself) 'wear each other's faces for a while'.

Quinn was disgusted, taking the suggestion as a literal one, as it had been in some movie she knew 'with that guy and that other guy'.

Taking the suggestion as a literal one, Sonny wanted to be the one who did the surgery.

The counsellor explained that she was only talking about role-playing.

Sonny riposted that he didn't see the problem. He could play the role of the crazed surgeon.

Commendably or not, the counsellor persevered, trying to get them to pretend to be each other. For example, she suggested, Sonny could be Helen, or Quinn could be Sonny.

'Oh God', said Quinn, 'just throw me in front of a train, why don't you?'

The counsellor misunderstood, so Quinn explained that that _was _her impression of Sonny.

Sonny was irritated. He wasn't suicidal. Not until it was suggested that he should be Quinn, that is. The counsellor decided to try starting with the adults instead.

Sonny's father began by feigning some reluctance, but it quickly became clear that he was only too eager to exhibit his idea of his wife's behaviour, ready to jump every time her boss said 'frog', without any kind of regard for her family at all.

Sonny's mother gave a nervous laugh of embarrassment. She didn't have much room to defend herself. But the counsellor reminded her that she was supposed to be acting Jake, not defending Helen. That wasn't hard. She had him down pat: the ranting, the whining self-pity, the oblivious cluelessness, the defensive evasiveness—even the rocking from side to side and the falling asleep.

Sonny looked from one parent to another as the back-and-forth heated up. He still wasn't sure just what they got out of their relationship with each other, but there was a strong connection of some kind there. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but maybe the counsellor had been on to something with this apparently dopey role-play idea.

'Oh, Jakey', said Jake as Helen. 'Let me bring home the pizza. I have to be the one doing everything so everyone will thank me and tell me what a big superwoman I am. I'm very, very important and very, very stressed and I don't have time to actually do anything for anyone else, but I can pretend I care, can't I?'

This last speech had ignited Helen's face, and as Jake sighed deeply she said quietly, no longer as Jake, 'Everybody hates me'.

'Are you being Sonny now?' Quinn said.

The counsellor restored Sonny's faith in her cluelessness by trying to get them to keep going. It was over. It was all over. Sonny's mother acknowledged as much, stood up, and left. Sonny's father proved that he saw more in his wife than he had revealed so far by giving chase, obviously already filled with remorse.

Pushing back his chair, Sonny said, 'That worked well', and then he left too. As he left he heard the counsellor, inadequate to the last, asking Quinn for an opinion on the scene that had just played out. He knew he could rely on Quinn to give a stupid answer to a stupid question.

He also knew he could rely on himself to find his mother before his father did. The cluelessness wasn't purely an act.

She was in the parking lot, trying to get into the car. When Sonny asked, she said she'd been planning to wait in the car until it was time to leave. Sonny pointed out that they weren't scheduled to leave until the next morning. His mother thought that she'd still do less harm that way.

'Look what I've done to my family! Your father feels completely neglected and resentful. I've shut you out so many times, you don't even try to talk to me, and Quinn … well, I can't even think about what happened there, not right now. Oh my God, Sonny! You didn't hear that!'

Sonny was relieved. Enlightenment had not made his mother smarter than he was.

'Look, Mom. Dad has to feel neglected, it's how he stays the centre of attention. And the reason I don't talk to you is that I know you'll hang on my every word, and frankly, who needs that kind of responsibility? And as for Quinn, well, I can't even think about what happened there.'

His mother laughed, and then stopped herself. She was obviously hesitating about accepting Sonny's reassurances. He explained to her that it was precisely because she was just as committed to the family as to the job that she was half-crazy.

'You really don't hate me for working so hard?'

'I came to this stupid place and pretended to be well-adjusted, didn't I?'

His mother looked at him and he realised he had to concede that one to her.

'Well, anyway, I came to this stupid place.'

It was lucky that Sonny's father caught up with them at that point, because Sonny had had about enough. Jake wanted to apologise to Helen and make up with her. Admittedly, it was a really stupid apology, all tangled up with Jake's recent obsession with milk, something Sonny just didn't want to think about any more. But a really stupid apology from her husband was just what Sonny's mother needed to hear right now. As his parents batted on about milk, Sonny said to himself instead, _My job here is done. Now I have to go home and commiserate with Jane about the failure of Jane-Cam. Why isn't there one thing in my life that does not make me feel awkward?_

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Psycho Therapy' by Neena Beber<strong>  
><em>


	48. Perceiving At An Angle

**Not So Different**

_**48. Perceiving At An Angle**_

'Want to go to that new warehouse store with me to pick up some more art supplies? I hear they've got a state-of-the-art linoleum floor.'

'Thanks, but I think I'll stay here, and excuse me, but what have you forgotten to treat me as if I have, Quinn?'

The way the sentence changed direction without warning or pause took its target by surprise and, judging by the sound on the other end of the phone line, Jane as well. Sonny stood up and walked the length of the couch to where Quinn was still on all fours holding one of the boots Sonny had taken off so he could put his feet up on the coffee table. Jane recovered the power of articulate speech.

'Forgotten to treat you as if what? What the hell are you talking about?'

'That was for Quinn's benefit', Sonny explained. 'But she's not going anywhere', he said, fixing Quinn in place with the prison-yard stare. 'You've got priority.'

'Well, now I kind of want to know what's up with you and Quinn, but if you come with me you can tell me about it. And there's safety in twos.'

'I thought you were hanging out with Tom.'

'Well, we were, but …' Jane's voice trailed away. 'I'd rather not talk about it.'

'You want me to tell you about me and Quinn, but you won't tell me about you and Tom? And you're the one asking me a favour in the first place?'

'You win. I'll swap stories with you. And I'll buy you a slice of pizza afterwards. Now will you come to Payday with me?'

'I guess I can pick up this lying-around project again tomorrow. I just hope I don't lose my momentum. I'll be with you as soon as I've finished with Quinn.' Sonny hung up, and turned his gaze back to Quinn, who had raised herself to a standing position while he talked with Jane, but slowly and carefully because she had now remembered to treat him as if he had …

'Eyes in the back of your head', Quinn said.

Sonny nodded. 'Especially', he said, 'if you're going after my bootlaces. What's the big idea?'

Quinn hesitated but Sonny just waited, not even bothering to intensify his stare. It never took much to make Quinn crack. 'The drawstring on my bag broke and I thought I could use one of your bootlaces instead. There isn't anything else that would do the job.'

'So why not just change bags?'

Quinn stared at him in astonishment. 'But that would mean changing the whole outfit!'

Sonny waited, knowing that given time and the stare Quinn would realise that what counted as an explanation to her did not count as an explanation to him.

'And I'm going to the school's annual football barbecue with the Fashion Club, and all our outfits have been coordinated in advance! I have to have that bootlace to close up my bag, or I can't show my face!'

'I'm sure the Fashion Club will survive your being absent this once', Sonny said. 'I have a feeling that's what your President would say.'

'No, I have to be there.' Quinn fidgeted as she tried to think of something else to say. 'It's not just for me', she said, brightening with inspiration. 'I'm assigned to bring the sunscreen for the whole club. If I'm not there, they won't be able to protect their sensitive skin. Especially Stacy', she continued, looking sideways at Sonny. 'She burns very easily. This isn't just a matter of fashion, you know. Sunburn can be very serious. You wouldn't want Stacy or anybody to risk skin cancer, would you? Here, let me show you!' Quinn produced a plastic bottle from her bag and handed it to Sonny.

'This bottle's nearly empty, Quinn. I don't think there's enough sunscreen here for one, let alone four.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to tell you what you should do to solve your problem, I'm only going to charge you five dollars for my advice, and I'm going to give you a money-back guarantee if it doesn't work. I must be getting soft in my old age.'

'Five dollars?'

'That's a bargain rate and you know it. Or you can try to solve your problem without my advice.'

Quinn grudgingly pulled out the money and handed it to him. 'Fine.'

'Right.' Sonny pocketed the money. 'You call Stacy and tell her you're going to be a little bit late to the barbecue and she should tell Sandi. You say that you think it's important to have only the best sunscreen, and tell her that somebody told you that you should look for a special new brand of sunscreen at the new warehouse store. That will be true, because I am telling you that, right now. Then you go to the warehouse store and buy whatever sunscreen you find there. If you can buy a special new brand, so much the better, but if not, you just say that you looked and there wasn't one. While you're at the store, you also buy something you can use as a drawstring for your bag—could be a bootlace if you like, or whatever else you can find. Then you head over to the barbecue, problem solved.'

Quinn glared at him. 'I'm paying you five dollars for that?'

'Only if it works, so I don't see you've got anything to complain about. Now I have to go. Don't tell me about your day.'

* * *

><p>'When I was in third grade, there was a bully who thought it was funny to sneak up and tie my shoelaces together, so that I'd fall over as soon as I stood up and tried to walk. By the end of the second week of that, I got so I could always see her coming and move my shoes away.'<p>

As Sonny walked with Jane to Payday, the new warehouse store she'd mentioned earlier, he was giving her an explanation.

'For her next trick she switched to putting things down the back of my neck. I got so that I could see that coming too, but it was harder to dodge. Then she … anyway, that's not the point. The point is that what I learned from her was good against anybody else, and so Quinn learned the lesson, from the time she was in second grade onwards, that she had to treat me as if I have eyes in the back of my head. At least, I thought so, until she tried pulling this latest stunt. I'm glad she didn't get hold of my bootlace', he said, as they got close enough to see the giant banner advertising Payday's grand opening, 'it's hard enough keeping up with you with my boots securely laced so that I can reach top speed.'

'I've gotta get those art supplies and finish my statue in time for the art fair's deadline. And I know you can keep up okay if you put your mind to it—and if you've got your bootlaces. Come on, I said I'd buy you a slice. Do you want me to make it two?'

'Nah, I can't do that after I took a cut rate from Quinn. I really must be getting soft in my old age.'

They were inside the store now, looking around.

'Wow', Jane said, 'I could never get Tom into a store like this.'

'And some day', Sonny said, 'he'll tell me his secret. Let's just find your art supplies and get out of here.'

They walked briskly up and down a few aisles without Jane spotting what she was looking for, and then Jane said, 'Hey, there's a salesperson, we can ask her.' She waved and called, 'Excuse me, miss?'

The girl responding by darting down another aisle before Sonny and Jane could catch her.

'It's good to know that what they save on air vents, they spend on customer relations', Sonny grumbled.

'You don't do well in overheated, overcrowded, grimy warehouse stores, do you?'

They rounded another corner and Sonny said, 'Especially not when they bring about unexpected encounters with my sister.'

'Do you think I want to be seen in public with you? It's bad enough that this place only sells the cheapest, most generic kind of sunscreen', Quinn said, brandishing the bottle at Sonny accusingly.

'How have you learned nothing from having me as a brother? I hate it when a good plan is spoiled by unskilled execution. The point isn't to come out of here with special sunscreen, the point is to come out of here saying that you were told the place sold special sunscreen. Now you just say that what you were told turned out to be wrong. You can say to your fr—your Fashion Club cohorts that it was your weird cousin or whatever who told you, and that he was probably deliberately giving you wrong advice. They'd probably believe that. Sandi certainly will.'

* * *

><p>'… and then I thought, why don't I do a special report for the next Fashion Club meeting on different kinds of sunscreen?' <em>So there, Sonny. I can have good ideas by myself.<em>

Stacy said, 'That sounds like a really good idea, Quinn!'

Sandi stared Stacy down to the flinching point. 'I believe that I, as Fashion Club Pre-si-dent, am responsible for setting the agenda for club meetings, Sta-cy.'

'Yes, Sandi. Sorry, Sandi.'

'However, on consideration I have decided that your suggestion is a good one, Quinn, and I accept it. And in view of your explanation we will forgive your performance today.'

'Oh, thank you, Sandi.' Quinn looked around the barbecue. 'So, how's this thing going anyway?'

'The initial catering was completely deficient in low-calorie, low-fat, low-salt, and high-fibre options', Sandi said.

'Yes', said Tiffany. 'Deficient.'

'They didn't have any barbecue sauce, either', said Stacy, and then, off Sandi's look, 'not that I wanted any, of course.'

'Barbecue sauce.' Tiffany shuddered. 'Ugh.'

Stacy picked up her account where she'd left off. 'But Kevin's dad didn't want to start cooking without the barbecue sauce, and Kevin's mom said Kevin could run to the store to get some, and then Brittany said she'd go with Kevin, but Kevin's mom said she didn't have to leave the party, and then Ms Onepu butted in and said none of the'—Stacy paused and dropped her voice—'_children _… needed to leave the party, because she'd go. I wish she wouldn't call us "children".'

Quinn agreed. 'I hate that.'

Sandi cleared her throat. 'We must, however, give Ms Onepu credit for having the sense to consult with experts before proceeding on a shopping expedition.'

Stacy started explaining to Quinn. 'She asked whether any of the—_children_—wanted anything else from the store. She's getting us more moisturiser and lip gloss because we'd run out, and we also—'

'If you don't mind, Stacy, I think I can explain my own meaning adequately.'

'Yes, Sandi. Sorry, Sandi.'

'As I was saying before I was interrupted, Ms Onepu undertook to be guided by the advice we provided in selecting more appropriate supplies for our consumption. However, I must say I am less confident in her performance considering that she has elected to do the shopping at the same outlet that supplied this cheap generic-brand sunscreen.'

* * *

><p>'Great', said Sonny. 'A feeding frenzy, and me without any chum.'<p>

The public address system at Payday had just announced twelve noon and the opening of the 'sample stations'—a term which a significant proportion of the circling scavengers present appeared to interpret as 'feeding troughs'.

Jane said, 'This could get ugly.'

'You're right. I'll go back to aisle thirty and get some lounge chairs.'

Jane reminded him that meeting the deadline for the art fair ruled out time for idle rubbernecking, and that Sonny's own plan had been just finding the art supplies and getting out. Then she gave a sharp gasp and flung out a triumphantly pointing finger.

'Look, there's that salesperson again, talking to another customer! Quick, before she gets away again!'

'That's Onepu', Sonny said, as they hustled forward.

Then the salesperson darted off to another aisle, escaping under cover of Onepu, who alone was left to receive Sonny and Jane's arrival. _We get one, we don't get the other, nil out of two for us, _thought Sonny.

'Sonny! Jane! What a pleasure to run into you! I'm always so happy to see any of my students. I know we're not at school now, but I'm always eager to do anything I can to help out. But why aren't you at the school's football barbecue?'

'That must be one of life's eternal mysteries', Sonny said, as Jane ducked around Onepu in an unsuccessful effort to see where the salesperson had gone.

'Darn, she got away.'

'The … uh, the shelf stacker? But why were you trying to catch her?'

Sonny gave the obvious answer. 'Directions.'

'Oh, but you must let me help you! What is it you're looking for?'

'Art supplies.'

'Or to be precise', Jane said, slowly, 'gummy bears.'

Sonny's head swivelled towards her involuntarily, as Onepu began chattering at full speed.

'Oh, but I can help you with that! I've just been buying food', she gestured at the trolley she was pushing, 'and I happened to notice that they have a special on gummy bears. I can show you the very spot. There's no need at all for you to go chasing after that—that girl.'

Sonny's head swivelled back towards Onepu. 'You mean the store employee who is paid, at least in theory, to help customers find the things they're looking for?'

Onepu jittered with anxiety. 'Oh, I mean—oh, this is very difficult … Sonny, Jane, I have something I feel I should tell you because it could be important for your personal growth, but I made a promise'—she looked from one of them to the other—'I think I can tell you this much, I think I should—that shelf stacker is actually another student from Lawndale High. That's why I stopped to talk with her. Perhaps you didn't recognise her in her work uniform. I was concerned about her because she seemed uneasy. She confided in me that she was trying to avoid the two of you. She is absolutely convinced that if you find out that she is working in what she called a "crappy" job in a warehouse store because her parents make her, you will—what was the expression she used?—"cut her up", the way she thinks you do to everybody else. I'm sure you can understand that I'm not saying this about you? That poor girl has a sadly distorted impression of two of the most remarkable young people it has ever been my privilege to know. Not that she isn't remarkable, too! You're all remarkable in your own ways, aren't you? But I thought you should be aware of the image of yourselves which you have inadvertently created in some of your fellow-students' minds. You see, that's why I promised her that I wouldn't tell you who she was or help you find her …'

While Onepu blathered, Sonny looked towards Jane and rolled his eyes. Jane suggested to Onepu that she just tell them where the gummy bears were.

'Oh, of course! I should have thought of that myself! I'm so sorry I've delayed you. I can do better than tell you, I can show you the way. Ah! I almost forgot! This is so awkward. They're waiting for me to bring these supplies to the barbecue. I don't want to hold you up, and I don't want to hold them up, and—'

For a moment, Sonny was intrigued by Onepu's continual instantiation of Buridan's ass. But the main thing, of course, was to avoid her company. He wanted to be around her less than he did around most people. He assured her that verbal directions would be sufficient.

* * *

><p>When Tom knocked on the door, it had been Jane's brother Trent who answered him. Jane had gone out with Sonny Morgendorffer, to a place called 'Payday'. Trent had explained that this was the name of the recently opened warehouse store.<p>

Tom asked for directions to the store. He wanted to talk with Jane and make up after their fight.

Trent had offered to drive Tom there, along with somebody Tom vaguely recognised as one of Trent's bandmates, the one who wore a vest without a shirt because he liked to show off his nicely muscled chest and arms, or because he hadn't come to terms with the concept of doing laundry. Trent wanted to buy a new headlight, and the other some scented candles. Apparently this 'Payday' sold just about everything.

* * *

><p>'Gummy bears?'<p>

Possessed of Onepu's directions, and relieved of her presence, Sonny had turned his attention back to the enigma Jane had presented him with.

'When you put those babies in a microwave, they melt into an incredible stained-glass-like mosaic. The goop also works as a killer adhesive.'

'Gee, does it remove pet stains, too?'

Jane disregarded Sonny's sarcasm. She explained that she'd been collecting the exact types for her purpose, sorted by colour, until—

'—Tom ate my gummy bears!'

Sonny stared at her. It occurred to him that Tom might possibly have simply been acting on the normal assumption that ingestion is the end for which gummy bears are naturally destined. It didn't sound like Tom—as far as Sonny knew him—to be deliberately inconsiderate in such a case. Studying Jane's indignation, he carefully probed indirectly, pretending to assume that Tom _had _been deliberately inconsiderate, and succeeded in eliciting from Jane a slightly abashed acknowledgement that she might not have told Tom her specific plans explicitly, although she hedged by insisting that he should have known anyway.

Emboldened, Sonny probed a little further. 'Definitely, since they were probably right there, next to your paints, unless he eats paint, too.'

'Um, the gummy bears were in a bowl on the kitchen counter. But, they were in plain view of my statue!' Jane skidded to a verbal halt. 'I don't have a leg to stand on, do I?'

'I think we need a clear understanding that I don't discuss your legs. That's what your boyfriend's for. Can we just pick up the pace again'—here Sonny matched action to words, and Jane joined him—'get your "art supplies", and get out of here? As for Tom, I think he can be reasonable.' He saw Jane giving him a quizzical look at this commendation of her boyfriend. 'I mean, enough. You should be able to talk things out with him, if you want to.'

'Sounds drastic.'

'Well, I don't know what other way you have of making things up to him. And I don't want to, or even to stay in the vicinity of the topic any longer, so it's a good thing that here are the gummy bears! Pick up what you need and let's go, before somebody at one of those sample stands tries to get us to buy one of their cheese-flavoured logs made from the allegedly finest ingredients.'

* * *

><p>Trent had asked whether the free samples were mozzarella.<p>

'Is that your favourite kind of cheese?'

Trent said yes.

'Then, it's mozzarella!'

Tom was appalled that anybody could fall for something so transparent, but then he'd been appalled from the moment he walked into Payday and seen somebody pushing a trolley entirely full of giant-size bottles of ketchup. Trent and his bare-chested sidekick didn't have the same reaction. To them, titanic quantities of ketchup were reasonable enough, implying only massive quantities of hamburgers.

And now they were standing at this so-called 'sample station' engulfing so-called 'cheez logs', oblivious to the fact that the servers would say anything at all to get the product into people's gullets. He reminded them of the urgency of finding Jane.

'Hey, man.'

'It's mozzarella.'

Tom winced, and gritted his teeth harder. Jane had come shopping here? It wasn't easy to believe. And _Sonny_? That was almost impossible to believe. Tom knew that he and Jane were really close, but still … he must have thought Jane really needed the company. She wouldn't have if her boyfriend had stuck around. He _had_ eaten her gummy bears, even if she had overreacted …

* * *

><p>Jane blanched as she and Sonny stared at the check-out lines. 'We're never going to get out of here, are we?'<p>

'Even the worst beatings I've ever taken came to an end eventually, and the wait to get to the register will do the same. Besides, if we let ourselves be tempted into standing around here and indulging ourselves in hating the situation instead of joining one of the lines, we might get caught by DeMartino.'

'What, is he here?'

Sonny stuck out an arm and pointed off to the side. 'Eyes in the back of my head. I think we're all right for the moment, he seems to be most interested in those "cheez logs".'

* * *

><p>Tom had finally managed to peel Trent and his beefcake companion away from their intake of food substitute and get them to the aisle with the gummy bears—but no Jane. Now they were in the automotive aisle, and Tom was unhappily listening to a slow-paced discussion of possible purchases.<p>

'One of those square headlights might look kind of cool.'

'Hmm', said Trent. 'Might not fit my car.'

Tom's brain tried to pull his ears into his skull. 'Might not? Trent, what's the year and model number of your headlight?'

'Hmm', said Trent. 'I bet that's important.'

* * *

><p>'The light at the end of the roach motel', Sonny said, as they reached the head of the line and Jane handed over her gummy bears to they could be rung up at the register. Then Jane saw him twitch.<p>

'What is it?' she said. 'Eyes in the back of your head again? Quinn? Onepu? DeMartino?'

He shook his head as she handed over her money and picked up her supplies. 'Take a look at who's just joining the back of that line next to us', he said.

Jane turned her head. 'Hey, it's Trent! And Jesse, and Tom!' She gave a huge wave to attract their attention. 'Tom! Hey! Over here!'

Tom trotted over from the back of the next line to join them as they walked through the checkout towards the exit. 'Hey, Jane, Sonny', he said. 'I was hoping to find you.'

'Singular or plural?' Sonny said.

Jane noticed Tom not flinching. 'Well, I went over to Jane's place to find her, and Trent said she'd come here with you, and he brought me over with him. He said he wanted to buy a headlight, but he didn't realise he'd need the model details to get the right one, so he's leaving without it. But his … um …' Tom gestured vaguely.

Jane guessed what he meant. 'Jesse?' she said.

'Sorry, I couldn't remember his name. He's buying some scented candles, so I just told Trent I'd leave with you and not wait for them. I … uh …' Tom looked from Jane to Sonny and back again as they walked out of Payday. 'I wanted to say I'm sorry. I overreacted. I mean, you did flare up at me, but I know your artwork is important to you, and …'

Jane interrupted him. 'Look, I'm the one that should be apologising. I mean it's true that I was counting on using those gummy bears, but there's no way you could have known that. I shouldn't have given you such a hard time for eating something that is supposed to be candy, after all.'

'Why don't we just forget about it?'

'Why don't you come with us to get some pizza, as soon as I've made the deadline for the art fair? I promised to buy Sonny a slice if he came here with me, and I'll buy you one as well.'

'That should take away the memory of the smell of those "cheez log" things Trent and Jesse were eating in there—if it's okay with you, Sonny?'

'Only on one condition', said Sonny. 'If you two are going to have a touching reconciliation after your quarrel, it has to be deferred till I'm gone. No fair buying me pizza and then spoiling my appetite.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Mart Of Darkness' by Rachelle Romberg<strong>_


	49. All Is Grist That Comes To The Mill

**Not So Different**

_**49. All Is Grist That Comes To The Mill**_

_So while we were waiting for the engine to cool off, _Sonny wrote in his email to Luhrmann, _Jane started talking about the house we'd stopped in front of. I told her I wasn't asking, but she just went on about how it was haunted, so I repeated that I was not giving any kind of encouragement, and then _…

* * *

><p>'Say, what are these books here? <em>The Vanishing Hitchhiker? The Choking Doberman? <em>Are these your bedtime reading?'

'Research material. I've been doing some study of urban legends.'

Jane put the books down. 'Urban legends?'

Sonny looked up from his notebook. 'Yeah, the professor who wrote those books has been collecting them for years. A bit like that graduate student who's supposed to have disappeared.'

'What graduate student?'

'You haven't heard that story?' Sonny turned his chair towards Jane as if he were settling himself for a longer talk.

Jane looked at her watch. 'Listen, I said I'd meet Tom for pizza, but why don't you tag along? It sounds like the kind of thing he might be interested in hearing too.'

'Well—if you're sure I won't be in the way.'

* * *

><p>'The story is that there was a graduate student in anthropology who was interested in modern folklore and urban legends, as they call them. She had some relatives, a cousin of her father's, I think, who she hadn't seen for a few years, because they'd moved across country, to a town called Lawndale.'<p>

Jane raised her eyebrows. 'Lawndale?'

'Sure, why not? It's not an unusual name, there's more than one Lawndale. But this particular Lawndale turned out to be of special interest to the graduate student in the story. She'd been following up several different urban legends and mapping their occurrence all over the country, and when she was getting ready to visit her relatives she noticed that not one of these stories, in any of their versions, had been reported from the Lawndale she was going to, or anywhere within a hundred and nine miles of it. It was as if it were in the centre of a hole in the map.'

Jane grinned. 'I think we've all thought something like _that_ at one time or another.' She looked to Tom, who nodded.

'That is, if you're talking about _this _Lawndale', he said.

Sonny did not react to Tom's remark, but continued with his story.

'This is why when she got to Lawndale she was keen to hear any odd stories that might be circulating locally. Her father's cousin had kids, high-schoolers, who she thought might be good sources, but she wanted to see what they came up with by themselves without being prompted—research methodology. It turned out one of them knew that urban legends were her subject and had taken a bit of an interest himself, and he told her about a story he'd heard recently from a friend, "The House Of Bad Grades", he called it.'

'I told you that myself!' Jane said. 'And it's not a legend, it happened right here in Lawndale! I showed you the house!'

Tom asked for an explanation.

Sonny summed up the tale for Tom's benefit. The story went that somebody had arranged to have a bomb shelter converted to a barbecue pit, and the concrete for the purpose had been dumped on top of the shelter without anybody realising that the owner's older daughter had been in it at the time. She'd gone down there for some quiet while she worked on a college application which she had hoped would get her out of the town, which she hated. When her ghost had realised that she would never leave Lawndale, she had determined to get her own back on generations of high-schoolers living in the house by cursing them all with bad grades, so that they also would be unable to leave town for college.

'If nobody knew she was down there when the concrete was dumped', Tom asked, 'where does the rest of the story come from? Isn't it obviously made up?'

'That's exactly what the graduate student thought. You see, even though urban legends do occasionally include apparently supernatural elements, like ghosts, they're supposed to be told as though they're verifiably true, something specific people actually saw and heard. But in the story of "The House Of Bad Grades", nobody ever sees or hears the ghost. The story says it's the ghost that causes the curse, but it doesn't explain how anybody knew that. And it actually says that the girl's parents thought she'd run away, so there's no explanation of how anybody knows she was entombed in the fallout shelter. That makes it sound like a story deliberately created as fiction, not a typical urban legend.'

Jane squirmed in her seat. Sonny didn't respond, but Tom looked at her quizzically.

'Well, a friend told me about it years ago, and she said she'd heard it from a friend of hers, and I just never thought …'

Sonny nodded. 'Now _that _part sounds like a typical "authentication" for any urban legend.'

'But it's true what I told you about how every kid who's lived in that house is working minimum wage in Lawndale to this day!'

'And how many kids would that be?'

'Uh … I don't know, I haven't kept count! Maybe eight, nine?'

'And how unusual would their fate be for a Lawndale High graduate?'

'Come on, it's not that bad!'

Sonny looked at her and then gave his head a slight but expressive tilt to one side, waiting.

'Okay, that's what happens to a lot of people here … so maybe it's not so big a deal after all … I still kinda like the story.'

Tom interposed and steered Sonny back to the subject of the graduate student.

'Maybe _she_ liked the story too, but it didn't have the ring of a real urban legend, even if there was one detail, the concrete pour, which was reminiscent of a well-known urban legend—that is, well-known to students of the field—in which the driver of a concrete mixer pours a load into a car because he mistakenly thinks its owner is having an affair with his wife. It was the next story she heard, the one about "Metalmouth", that sounded more like a genuine urban legend.'

'Is that the same one Trent told?' Jane tried to give Sonny a penetrating look, but it bounced off. 'Are you sure you're not talking about _our _Lawndale?'

'Did I say I wasn't talking about our Lawndale? Did I say anything one way or the other about which Lawndale this was? That doesn't affect the story.' Sonny turned to Tom and started on a further explanation. 'Trent was supposed to be giving my dad a ride to pick up Quinn and the rest of the Fashion Club because Dad couldn't get our car to start. Jane and I tagged along. On the way Trent told us the story of "Metalmouth" and then when his car broke down too it was in front of a house which Jane said was "The House Of Bad Grades", so she told us that story—no matter how much I tried to discourage her by telling her that I was in no way interested.' Sonny glanced for a moment at a sheepish Jane before continuing. 'Oddly enough, I found out later that at the same time all this was going on, Quinn was hearing the story of "The Rattling Girl Of Lawndale" from Stacy.'

Jane said she'd never heard of 'The Rattling Girl Of Lawndale'. Tom said he hadn't either, nor, for that matter, of 'Metalmouth' or 'The House Of Bad Grades'. Sonny said he'd tell them about 'The Rattling Girl Of Lawndale' as soon as he'd finished with 'Metalmouth'.

'Trent's story was that "Metalmouth" was a former Lawndale High metal shop teacher. He had a bad habit of grinding his teeth a lot, mostly when he was exasperated over the stupidity of many of his students.'

'Now that I think about it', Jane said, 'you have to admit that that part does sound a lot like our Lawndale.'

Sonny shrugged. 'Eventually, the story goes, he ground his teeth away altogether. To replace them, he handforged a set of steel dentures in the metal shop. They worked well enough at first—in fact he enjoyed the savage biting power they gave him—but then they started picking up radio broadcasts.'

Tom interrupted. 'Is that something that can actually happen, or is it an urban legend in itself?'

'I don't know. But it's there in the story of "Metalmouth", as the reason why he fled in humiliation from the laughter of his students. And although he wasn't seen again at Lawndale High, a couple of students making out in their car parked in the woods were frightened and drove away after hearing strange metallic noises, and a song playing when their radio wasn't switched on. Then, when they got home, they found four flat tyres with toothmarks on them, and a set of handforged steel dentures hanging from the door handle.'

'When Trent was telling us this story, I kept visualising DeMartino as "Metalmouth". I wonder whether he ever taught shop.' Jane took another bite of pizza.

Sonny disregarded Jane's remark and explained that the graduate student saw some resemblances between 'Metalmouth' and another notorious urban legend, 'The Hook', which involved a teenage couple, making out in a car, and being frightened by a story on the car radio about an escaped maniac with a hook for a hand. 'They drive off suddenly', he continued, 'and when they get out, find the hook attached to the car's door handle.'

'I see the similarity', Tom said. 'The car's sudden departure had caught the maniac just as he tried to open the door and yanked his hook from his arm—or in the case of "Metalmouth", the dentures from his mouth.'

Sonny nodded slightly. 'But the graduate student's own story goes on to say that just after she'd got this story from her high-school informant, the boy's mother came home and said that while she'd been waiting at a stop light near the woods—the same woods that were the setting of the "Metalmouth" story—she'd heard a song playing even though she didn't have the radio on, and she'd also heard her car door making a strange metallic sound. And when the graduate student went to check later on, she found a set of handforged steel dentures hanging from the door handle.'

'Next on _Sick, Sad World_!' said Jane.

'So how did the graduate student react to that?' said Tom.

Sonny cleared his throat and then took a drink before continuing. 'Oddly enough, with a similar reaction to Sandi's reaction to the "Rattling Girl Of Lawndale" story. I'll tell you about that first.'

Tom and Jane both nodded.

'The story itself is straightforward. It tells of a girl, one of the popular people at high school, who meticulously dieted herself to what was supposed to be the point of absolute popularity perfection until it turned out to be also the point at which people could actually hear her bones rattling when she moved. She was so humiliated that she fled the school, never to be seen again—'

'Just like "Metalmouth" ', Tom said.

'—yes, just about. After that, the story goes, all the popular girls at school were haunted by a strange rattling sound, as if she were stalking them. They didn't dare sleep for fear of her, they all got bloodshot eyes, and they became unpopular.'

Tom swallowed a mouthful. 'You said something about Sandi's reaction?'

'Yes, she said that the whole thing was just a story made up by unpopular people to scare popular people into becoming unpopular. And that was a surprisingly insightful remark—probably by coincidence. Sandi was scared off along with the rest of the Fashion Club when they heard a strange rattling sound just after Stacy finished telling her story.'

Jane raised an eyebrow. 'A strange rattling sound? Really?'

Sonny ploughed on. 'That's what they said. Anyway, the graduate student knew well that urban legends often perform the function of transmitting a conventional moral message, and obviously "The Rattling Girl Of Lawndale" is well-fitted to that. But it wasn't otherwise like other urban legends that she knew about. She came up with a really wild speculation which would fit with the facts of a zone with no occurrence of otherwise established urban legends, but strange stories of its own almost but not quite like the recognised kind. What if somewhere in or near Lawndale there was a person, or a group of people, secretly and deliberately manufacturing pseudo-urban-legends? What if they were even manufacturing evidence for them, like the handforged steel dentures which the graduate student actually saw?'

Tom said, 'In that case, wouldn't there be more of them?'

'There were', said Sonny flatly. 'There was a story involving a tree that had been planted as a memorial when a former star of the high-school football team was killed in a freak accident.'

'Okay, that _is _this Lawndale', Jane said. 'That's the Tommy Sherman Memorial Tree. So you're going to say that another football star crashed his motorcycle into this tree and killed it and injured his knee, right?'

'Yes', said Sonny briefly. 'Then the dead man's ghost haunted a girls' bathroom at the high school, and the haunting only stopped when one of the cheerleaders took one of the crutches the injured player had been using and planted it in the tree's place.' Sonny looked from Tom to Jane and back again. 'And a live flower sprouted from the crutch.'

Jane and Tom both scoffed.

'That's the story. The graduate student knew that a live flower can't really sprout from a crutch, but she did wonder whether that could be conspirators faking evidence again. Then she also heard a story about a day when everybody in the town started singing and dancing as if they were in a musical, and kept on doing it all through a huge storm. That wasn't like any urban legend she'd ever heard of, and it would be difficult to fake as well.'

'It doesn't sound like Lawndale, either', Tom said.

Jane nodded. 'It sounds like that episode from that television show. But that had a supernatural explanation—a demon from another dimension, or something.'

Tom looked back at Sonny. 'You did say urban legends occasionally included supernatural features.'

'Rarely. And the story of "Lawndale: The Musical" didn't include any explanation, supernatural or otherwise. But the graduate student was told another story with an explicit supernatural element: a dimensional wormhole behind a restaurant leading to a place inhabited by personified spirits of all the special days in the calendar.'

Jane slapped both hands on the table. '_You _told me _that_ story! I never believed it, either.'

Sonny looked appraisingly at Jane. 'If one Lawndale can have a restaurant with a dimensional wormhole behind it, so can another.' He looked from Jane to Tom. 'Anyway, the graduate student didn't believe any of these stories were true. But because they were strangely both like and unlike genuine urban legends, or at least some of them were, she decided to investigate. She walked around the so-called "House Of Bad Grades", but couldn't see anything special, so she went on to the woods where "Metalmouth" was supposed to lurk. Then, suddenly, she heard a strange rattling sound—but when she checked, it wasn't a skeletal girl, or the spectre of one, but a small dog that had got a stick in its mouth. The dog was walking alongside a fence, and the stick was rattling against it. So the graduate student got hold of it—'

'The fence, or the stick?' said Tom.

Sonny did not rise to the bait. 'The dog. It had a tag on its collar, with a name on it—Onepu.'

'Onepu!' Jane turned to Tom. 'That's the name of one of the teachers in the science department at Lawndale High. She's …'

'That's her name according to what she'd like us to think. But when this graduate student did a little research, she found that Onepu exists as a place name, in New Zealand, but she couldn't find any record of it as a personal name. That made her even more suspicious.'

Sonny fell silent.

'So what happened?'

'She was thinking about different ways she might investigate the meaning of "Onepu", but in the meantime she had another lead to follow up, the story about a dimensional wormhole behind the restaurant. So she set out there to look for clues.'

Sonny fell silent again.

'And?'

Sonny stood up. 'And she disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Does anybody want another slice of pizza?'

'What kind of story is that supposed to be?' said Jane.

'I think', said Tom slowly, 'it's the kind of story, maybe like some urban legends—but unlike "The House Of Bad Grades"—that has a definite moral.' He looked back and forth between Sonny and Jane. 'Never kid a kidder.'

* * *

><p>As Sonny, Tom, and Jane walked out of the pizzeria, Sonny was greeted by a woman in her mid-twenties who was entering it. She asked him about the pizza.<p>

'Best in town', he told her, 'for what that's worth.'

'Who was that?' said Tom, as they walked away.

'A relative. She's staying with us for a few days while she takes a break from her graduate school research.'


	50. Fortune Spins Its Wheels

**Not So Different**

_**50. Fortune Spins Its Wheels**_

'Um, excuse me? I believe going to mind-numbing parties falls under the job description of "boyfriend".'

'I'm giving Tom the night off', Jane said. 'I want to spend some time with you.'

'Uh-huh. How long's he out of town?'

Brittany Taylor's father and stepmother were throwing a party for her on Saturday, the occasion being her success in raising her average grade to C-minus. She had announced at school that she was inviting everybody, even the unpopular people (reminding Sonny and Jane how specially welcome she'd made them feel the first time they'd been invited to one of her parties—obviously she hadn't lost her social knack). Mystik Spiral was going to play, and the band were keen for Sonny and Jane to come along. ('We could use the moral support', Trent had said. 'All right', Jane had replied, 'but the support will be amoral at best.')

Now Jane was trying to persuade Sonny to participate, never an easy task. She reminded him of the unbelievable décor at the Taylors', and told him about some of the recent additions, but she made no headway at all (he didn't even bother opening his mouth to reply to her) until she remembered what had clinched his decision to come to come to that earlier party at the Taylors'.

'Eh, too bad. Quinn would be mortified if you were there.'

Still without changing expression he conceded.

'That's the spirit!' said Jane.

'Spirit?'

'Sorry.'

* * *

><p>Before long Sonny had fresh reason to think that he wouldn't mind seeing Quinn mortified. Not that he'd ever mind that, of course, but now, he told himself, would be a particularly good time for it to happen. Ever since she'd narrowly escaped when a light fitting inexpertly repaired by their father had fallen on the chair she'd just stood up from, she had been convinced that she was receiving special protection from a guardian angel.<p>

Now Sonny was standing with Jane in a Lawndale High hallway eavesdropping, saturninely, as Quinn told Tiffany and Stacy how 'something' had told her to get out of the chair just in time. When Sandi joined them, Quinn drew further proof that she was being protected by a guardian angel from the fact that she had been—or from the confabulation that she had been—'told' by 'something or somebody' not to buy the exact same sweater, as she had been tempted to do.

Sandi was moved _way_ up in Sonny's estimation by her response: 'Quinn, maybe you better stop putting your coats into storage until we know the effects of mothball fumes on the human brain.' But Quinn had Tiffany and Stacy convinced, and later in the day Sonny was passing by and heard that Sandi had changed her tack and was insisting that it was no big deal, that she also had a guardian angel, although she didn't brag about it all the time. Quinn said that was great and asked excitedly what sort of thing Sandi's guardian angel did for her. Sandi mentioned, as an example, her angel's advice that she eat raspberry vinaigrette dressing to 'make my hair extra luminous'.

It proved to be a poor choice of example (demonstrating, if Sonny had needed any demonstration, the limits of Sandi's strategic abilities). The vinaigrette (or something) made Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany all suddenly feel ill, and as they fled in the direction of the girls' bathroom, clutching queasily at mouth, throat, or belly, Quinn announced beatifically that somebody or something had stopped her from eating that dressing.

Sonny said to Jane, 'I didn't have it either, but I still feel like I'm gonna be sick.'

* * *

><p>Sonny felt even more nauseated when he found his mother on the living-room couch reading Quinn's book, the one with all the stories about 'real-life' encounters with guardian angels. She wanted to see what Quinn was so excited about. When Sonny tried to make her see how ridiculous the whole thing was, she asked him what harm there could be in Quinn's believing in guardian angels even if he didn't.<p>

'The harm', Sonny said heavily, 'is that she does not have a guardian angel looking out for her.'

'Sonny, why does this bother you so much?'

They were interrupted by an agonised cry from Quinn. Sonny's first idle speculation, a third-party fashion violation, was wrong; Quinn's new jeans had come out of the laundry stained black.

The explanation presented itself a moment later when their father came in looking for his electrical tape.

'We may never know', Sonny said, 'just who—or what—it was … but somebody or something must have told Dad to leave that tape in his pocket when his pants went in the wash.'

'Why?' said Quinn. 'Why would my angel do something like this to me?'

'Because he's got a mean sense of humour? In my experience that's an explanation that often works. It could be that he thinks stained jeans are funny.'

'The stains aren't too bad', said their father, self-exculpatorily. 'You could still wear them.'

'Dad! I'm not Sonny!'

Helen suggested that since Jake had ruined Quinn's jeans he should pay to replace them. Quinn rejected his first offer as financially inadequate, and while she was bargaining him up Sonny suggested that he should get some money too.

Quinn pointed out that Sonny didn't wear jeans.

'Let me get this straight', Sonny said. 'The guardian angels think Quinn is more deserving of their attention than I am, and so do you.'

'Jake, give them each fifty and don't negotiate.'

When Quinn had taken her money, thanked her guardian angel for it, and left, Sonny said, 'Mom, do you remember what happened to me in fifth grade?'

His mother hesitated, unsure what he might be referring to.

'And in fourth grade?' he said. 'And in third, second, and first grades? And in sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth grades? In fact, what's been happening to me pretty nearly all my life?'

A look Sonny knew passed between his parents.

'After my experience of life, can you expect me to believe in guardian angels? Can you expect me to agree that it's good for somebody to believe in guardian angels?' He held up the fifty-dollar bill between the fingers of both hands and flexed his wrists and knuckles to make it crackle. 'Better to learn to be your own guardian angel.' He put the money in a pocket and left the room.

* * *

><p>'You know what's bothering you?' Jane said. 'You're afraid that it's true. That the Quinns of the world fit in so well because something really is looking out for them. Everything's already been decided, they win, you lose, and whatever you do doesn't matter because the end is fixed. So, why even bother?' She stopped walking. 'God, I'm so depressed.'<p>

Sonny just looked at her. _You think that's what's bothering _me_? I think that's what's bothering _you_. That might explain some things. _He gave Jane an appraising look. But since they were at Crewe Neck, walking to Brittany's party, he had higher priorities than helping Jane to adjust her perspective. 'You're right', he said, starting to turn to head back home. 'We better call it a night.'

Jane blocked him and gave him a shove forward. 'Keep moving, Morgendorffer.'

* * *

><p>Sonny had nothing better to do than compile a mental comparison between this experience and the first party he'd been to at the Taylors', early in his time in Lawndale. Jane had been a key factor in getting him to both of them. The décor was as egregious as ever, only, as Jane had promised, even more emphatically so. More people knew who he was now, so more people avoided him automatically. This time he could be sure that there was absolutely no chance of Upchuck accosting himself and Jane. Mystik Spiral was performing. It was hard to say whether that made things better or worse, but it was certainly different. He drifted over to the snack table with Jane to see whether there were still two kinds of chips.<p>

He was able to share one worthwhile moment with Jane. They were approached, almost accosted, by a woman whose blonde hair, conventional attractiveness, perkiness, and general demeanour so resembled Brittany's that Sonny would have taken her for Brittany's mother had he not known that this party was being given by Brittany's father and _step_mother. She seemed puzzled by their presence, showing that even the clueless could see that Sonny and Jane didn't belong. Not recognising them, she queried whether they were friends of Brittany.

'Brittany?' responded Jane, in a tone of voice which made Sonny feel that he'd been rubbing off on her.

The woman explained (only with bad grammar) that Brittany was the person the party was for.

'Party?' said Sonny.

The woman persevered. 'Yes, party. For Brittany, because she's become an honour student.'

'Brittany?' said Jane. Sonny felt proud of what a team they made—too strong a team for the airhead to compete with.

There could be an explanation for this woman's resemblance to Brittany even if she was the stepmother. Maybe Brittany took after her mother, and maybe her father had, as some people did, metaphorically married the same woman twice.

Whoever she was, her dialogue of the deaf with Jane and Sonny was interrupted by Mr Taylor's announcement in recognition of Brittany. When he called on 'Ashley-Amber' to produce the 'little present', the woman who'd been talking to Jane and Sonny responded, implicitly confirming her status in the household . Her husband extracted a glass ('genuine near-crystal') cheerleader's bullhorn from the case she held out to him, and handed it to Brittany.

It was then, as Brittany thrilled at her new fandangle, that somebody or something told Quinn that it was the right time to lean against the mixing board. She accidentally nudged one of the controls. A hideous vibration juddered from the sound system and shattered Brittany's award, engendering a moment that Sonny would always remember for its transcendent beauty, as the whole room stared silently at his sister, unmoved by her promise to buy a replacement gewgaw.

Sonny didn't even have to point out to Quinn how oddly her guardian angel was behaving. Sandi did that for him. (Well, technically she was doing it for herself, or at any rate against Quinn, but Sonny felt uncharacteristically disinclined to carp.) Quinn fled in tears. Sometimes life could be almost rewarding.

* * *

><p>Everything has its limits, and especially life's rewards. Sonny came home to find Quinn so despondent that she had the television tuned to an educational program. With her angel 'gone', she had lapsed into indifference. How could Sonny feel bad about that? Could this be an unaccustomed twinge of … conscience?<p>

And if Quinn didn't know about his internal discomfort—and how could she possibly achieve any penetration of his internal processes?—why was she choosing this moment to be candid with him? First she acknowledged that 'guardian angels sound like a dumb idea, but' (she continued) 'once I started believing in them, it felt really nice. Like there was someone put here just to do things for me.'

In self-defence, Sonny reminded both Quinn and himself that this description already applied to the entire male population of Lawndale High. Quinn told him it wasn't the same thing, and went on to refer, candidly, without irony or contempt, to Sonny's intelligence.

_Sonny _responded with irony, but also warily, because this was an obvious preliminary to seeking his advice and guidance and, indeed, Quinn went on to say, 'If there are no guardian angels, what do you believe in?'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'In my case, Quinn, it's not so much a matter of what I believe in as a matter of what experience has taught me. What I believe, if you want to put it that way, although it's true whether I believe it or not, is that any place, any time, any corner I go round, I may find myself facing off with somebody who wants to pick on me, bully me, harass me, beat me up, or just generally make my life wretched. If I do have a guardian angel, then the only way it makes sense is that the bullies have guardian angels too and they have my guardian angel boxed into a corner. Either that, or my guardian angel decided a long time ago to get with the strength and just hang around with the more successful guardian angels admiring the job they were doing on me. And after all this time as my sister, Quinn, you know that if I wanted to complain, I've had a lot more to complain about in my life than Dad spoiling a new pair of jeans, or the fact that somebody or something—we may never know who or what—told you to stand in just the spot where Brittany's little brother would collide with you and make you spill your drink all over your replacement new jeans.' (Sonny had found out that Quinn had been trying to mop up after this accident with a paper towel when she leaned against the mixing board.)

'So what I believe, Quinn, is that guardian angel or no guardian angel, my best plan is to keep an eye out all around all the time for any potential nasty surprise that might be around the next corner, and to keep in training to do the best for myself no matter what piece of misfortune might be next down the pike.' As he developed this idea, Sonny was struck by a literary memory. 'Have you ever heard of Aesop's fables?'

'Um … that's the ancient guy with the animal stories, right?'

Sonny explained that not all of Aesop's fables featured animals, and told Quinn about Hercules and the wagoner, and how that fable was the origin of the maxim that the gods help those who help themselves. Hercules, or Heracles, he mentioned, was supposed to be the most helpful to mortals of all the ancient Greek or Roman heroes, and their special friend among the immortals: a bit like a guardian angel for everybody.

'A guardian angel for everybody!' Quinn said. 'No wonder he was too busy to help out with every little thing for all those people who couldn't even make an effort for themselves. Until I started believing in my guardian angel I always put maximum effort into fashion and popularity. You know what? I'm going to go back to doing that. I won't rely on my guardian angel for little things when he might have much more important things to look after. I just know that if I need him for anything really critical, like a complexion crisis or an unanticipated weight gain, he'll be there. Thanks, Sonny.'

Sonny watched with mixed feelings as Quinn walked off, no doubt to resume putting maximum effort into fashion and popularity without delay. A moment later his mother walked in. She had a look on her face of maternal pride. He knew she'd been listening.

'Don't mention it', he said.

'Quinn seems to be doing better.'

'I asked you not to mention it. Are you punishing me for trying to make my little sister cry?'

'I think it was sweet the way you comforted her.'

'Sweet?' Sonny flashed his eyebrows. 'Officer, you've got the wrong guy.'

His mother shrugged. 'Okay, Sonny. Whatever you say.'

The next day at school, Sonny got a more satisfactory response, with more genuine understanding, from Jane, who observed that Quinn had recovered from her spiritual crisis. Sonny told her that he'd known Quinn's suffering wouldn't last.

Jane said, 'The good times never do.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Groped By An Angel' by Jonathan Greenberg<strong>_


	51. What's Going On Here?

**Not So Different**

_**51. What's Going On Here?**_

The hotel had set up one channel on the television just to promote itself, to people who, by necessity, were _already _inside it. But as the son of a marketing consultant, Sonny had seen clients pay his father for even less useful ideas.

They were talking about the opportunities for playing golf at the hotel. _Golf, _Sonny thought. _A good walk ruined. But that's not original. _He thought about it for another minute. _It's an activity my father enjoys. That has to make me suspicious._

He welcomed being interrupted by a knock which he correctly guessed would be the bellhop with his room-service hamburger. When he opened the door, he recognised Bobby, who'd met them on arrival. When he'd put the tray on the table and removed the lid, he started fidgeting. Sonny proffered cash, but Bobby ignored the money (so Sonny shoved it back in a pocket) and said, 'You know your sister, Quinn?'

'For my sins, but I live in daily hope of the blessing of amnesia.'

'Is she seeing anybody?'

'Only a dermatologist, for that rash', Sonny said, still automatically.

Bobby grinned nervously and flinched. 'Oh … er …'

Sonny looked at the youth as his own mind clicked rapidly into gear. He remembered arriving at the hotel. Bobby had offered to help with the luggage, and then taken care of Quinn's only. As he escorted Quinn inside, Jake had been left to his own devices—to speak loosely—to cope, or not, with the rest. He'd collapsed under the weight of the one case he'd managed to haul from the car and remained pinned underneath it until another bellhop came to his assistance.

Should Sonny crush Bobby's hopes quickly or leave him to be ground down by Quinn slowly?

Sonny couldn't altogether blame Bobby for Sonny's father's problems. His father would always get himself into trouble. It was because he'd set the kitchen on fire that they were staying in this hotel at all.

The issue resolved into a question which answered itself: why should Quinn get anything out of this?

'Don't worry', he said, 'it's not contagious. And even if it were, you'd never get close enough to catch it. Trust me, I'm her brother. I've seen it all before a hundred times. At most she might let you get as far as slow dancing by the fifth date' and he made an unusual effort to shift his tone of voice for emphasis and conviction '_if you're lucky._'

Bobby's face took on a blank look and then, as Sonny sat down and began to eat, he blinked rapidly. Sonny decided to follow up.

'The halls of Lawndale High are littered with the hearts that girl's broken.' He shook his head meaningly, then continued eating.

Bobby half-turned to go, then seemed to come partway back to himself and stammered, 'Well … um … enjoy your snack, sir', before leaving the room.

When the door had closed behind Bobby, Sonny turned an appraising gaze in that direction for a moment. _A probable twelve to seven_, he quoted to himself, _that the guy's only doing it for some doll._ Well, he'd done what he could. He returned his attention to his hamburger.

As his appetite was progressively satisfied, he looked around the room again. He reflected on the kind of isolation from his parents and Quinn that staying in hotel rooms afforded him. So why wasn't he savouring it more? By the time he finished eating he was brooding hard.

Looking around the room again, his eye fell on the phone. He walked over to it, picked up the receiver, and dialled Jane.

* * *

><p>Jane looked out of the corner of her eye at Tom, then back at the television screen. Maybe she had been a little hard on him. It hadn't been fair for her to jump down his throat about having given Sonny his phone number. He'd been quite right: <em>she <em>had given Sonny Tom's phone number, so that they could rescue Sonny from a family bonding day. Well, she hadn't exactly jumped down his throat—she'd just asked, hadn't she? And when he reminded her of the facts, she'd let it drop, hadn't she? He'd reacted as if he didn't like the tone of her voice—but when did he get elected to decide what tone of voice she used?

She sighed quietly and took another peek at Tom. He was intent on _Sick, Sad World_. At least that was something they both liked.

It had been awkward for her at the beginning, when Sonny had made it quite clear that he didn't like Tom and didn't like Jane's involvement with him. But gradually he'd warmed to Tom. Well, not exactly 'warmed'. That wasn't Sonny's style. Still, in his own way he was getting along with Tom. That should make things easier for her. But …

This time it had started when she and Tom couldn't agree on a movie to see. If the idea of a movie hadn't come up, they would have been sitting here right now enjoying _Sick, Sad World_, making fun of things, no problems … well, nothing to speak of, anyway. She stole another peek at him. The thing about Sonny getting along with Tom, she told herself, was that it reminded her that maybe she and Tom weren't getting along as well as they used to. The subject of Sonny having Tom's phone number had come up because Tom had mentioned that Sonny had left him a message about a Fellini film festival, because he didn't fancy Jane's suggestion, _Screecher II_. The truth was that on some other occasion Jane might have been interested in a Fellini film, but definitely not when Tom began to talk about 'symbolism', and 'the cinema', and 'a movie with a plot'. Was it unreasonable that she didn't like being condescended to? Tom had watched plenty of exploding-eyeball-type movies with her. Did he think that was all she was good for? Was he just slumming with her? Was he trying to give her some message by the way he went on about Fellini and 'the cinema'? She was about to take another brooding peek at him when the phone rang. Trent answered it. A moment later he called out to her.

'Hey, Janey! Sonny's on the phone for you.'

Tom remained silent as Jane got up from the couch and walked into the other room to take the call.

'Yo.'

'Are you okay?'

Jane shook herself back to normal. 'Sure. What's up?'

'I thought you might like to come over and check out Le Grand Hotel.'

'Actually … I'm hanging out with Tom tonight.'

'Oh. Well, why not bring him over too? There's plenty of space. In fact it'd probably be better that way. If my parents find out you were in my room I can tell them we had your boyfriend as a chaperone.'

The thought of Sonny wanting Tom as a chaperone made Jane uncomfortable. 'Um … maybe some other time, okay?'

'I guess. You know we're going to be here for a while, but not forever? I just thought you might like the chance to see the place up close while you can.'

'Yeah. Right. So … I'll come round some time. And by the way, uh, thanks for leaving that message on Tom's machine about _La Dolce Vita_.'

'Hey, watching a dead fish wash up on shore always puts me in a good mood.'

Jane ignored Sonny's words. 'But, you know, you don't have to go to all the trouble of calling Tom. I'm always happy to pass messages along.'

'Sure. I just …'

Jane cut in. 'Well, see ya soon! Gotta get back to Tom now!' She hung up and went back to the couch.

Tom asked her what Sonny had been calling about.

'Didn't I tell you? His dad accidentally set their kitchen on fire last night and they're staying in a hotel for a few days during the repainting.'

Tom turned his attention to her from the television. 'Nobody was hurt, right?'

'Nah. They all got out at once, the fire brigade got to it in time, and there was just some smoke damage.'

'Good.' Tom was still looking at her.

'So, um, anyway, Sonny thought maybe I'd like to come round to check out the rooms, see what the place is like. I told him we were busy tonight.'

Tom raised his eyebrows. 'Busy?'

Jane squirmed slightly. 'So, wanna go out and get some pizza?'

* * *

><p>'So, still planning on coming over to check out Le Grand Hotel some time?' Sonny said to Jane as they walked along a Lawndale High hallway. 'You know it's up to you. It's just you seemed interested when I said we'd be staying there. If you've changed your mind, that's cool.'<p>

Jane looked closely at Sonny but he didn't change his expression. She'd been stalling him about this for the last few days without actually rejecting the idea, and getting more and more awkward about it. Now she seemed to have reached the point where she felt she had to give him some kind of explanation.

'Uh …', she said, 'the thing is … well, things have been a bit … what's the word? What I mean is' she said reluctantly, 'things haven't been so great with Tom and me lately. So I've been trying to spend more time with him.'

Sonny thought rapidly. Were Jane and Tom about to break up? Then Tom … Tom would just be out of the picture. That would have to mean Jane spending more time with him, which could never be bad, but … they weren't going to break up because of him, not because of anything he'd done or anything he hadn't done. That just wasn't going to happen.

'There's no problem with that', he decided. 'You could spend time together at the hotel.'

They had arrived at Mrs Bennett's classroom, and Jane stopped in the doorway, from where one of the teacher's characteristic hopelessly muddled diagrams was visible on the blackboard. She gestured at it.

'It's as tangled as that. Can we talk about it later? I'll make it straight for you as much as I can.'

'Lunchtime?'

After half a minute, Jane inclined her head. Then they went into class.

Later, over lunch, Jane tried to explain.

'I'm not trying to give you a hard time about it now, but I know you weren't too happy when I started dating Tom.'

Sonny interjected. 'I acted like a jerk, to you and to Tom. That's why I'm trying to be different now.'

'Yeah, well, it's true that my hanging out with Tom has to mean spending less time with you, maybe less than we'd both like, but it's like I told you, it doesn't mean our friendship is less important to me. It's just …'

'… one of those things.'

Jane pulled a face. 'I guess. Anyway, it made things easier for me when it seemed like you were going to suspend hostilities with Tom, but …'

'How does Mrs Bennett's diagram come into this?'

'I dunno.' Jane looked glum. 'It's just confused, like with lots of circles and crosses and arrows all over the place linking them up.'

'Am I a circle or a cross in this analogy?'

'Sorry—I really am sorry—but in this analogy I'm not sure what you are. That just makes it more confused. The thing is … while I'm working on spending more time with Tom … and you're suggesting we could do that at the hotel, but …'

'I think I'm starting to get it. You want to spend time together, but you're not sure whether the hotel is the right sort of place to spend the right sort of time. I kind of understand. I guess it's easy to think of a hotel as a place full of lots of other people, which you know is not something I would willingly inflict on you any more than I would willingly inflict it on myself. But when you're actually there it's not like that.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. He realised that Jane had been avoiding this conversation because she didn't want to say to him straight out that she wanted to spend time with Tom without Sonny. But he understood that without her saying it, and now that he knew that Jane and Tom were having problems he wanted to act like a friend. All this flashed through his mind in a moment before he continued.

'You remember when you and Tom had a date to meet at the parade?'

Jane nodded. 'But you hooked up with him instead.'

'Hooked up? We were together briefly, but he was looking for you the whole time, and he was still looking for you when I left.'

'Yeah, he found me in the end.' Jane poked at her food.

'Well, you told me that your date with Tom consisted of making fun of people.'

'I told you that you were being simplistic.'

'Anyway, if that's the way you and Tom have fun together, there's no shortage of subjects at the hotel. Fresh ones, too. You could hang out at the pool, for example. There's lots of people making public buffoons out of themselves with extroverted horseplay, and that's not even counting my parents. Then there's people who aren't even interested in the water, but are just using it as an excuse for lounging around in public, like Quinn and her Fashion Club cronies—when they're not exploring other ways of exploiting the half of the male staff that they've got twisted around their little fingers. If Quinn can bring in her friends, so-called, as guests, I don't see why I shouldn't do the same. If things haven't been so great with you and Tom lately, maybe a change of scene and somebody new to joke about is just what you need.'

Sonny paused for a reply from Jane, but she just kept looking down at her lunch, so he took another tack.

'Of course, what would I know. Giving you advice about this makes me feel like a fraud. But I know that the time at the hotel seems to have been good for my parents. When they're not hanging around the pool they're spending a lot of time in their room … the word 'rekindling' just came into my mind and I don't want to think about what my parents are doing any more. But when I'm in my room, it's like the Fortress of Solitude. At home I had to see Quinn and my parents sometimes at meals and other odd times, but now I can get all my meals from room service, and if I was abducted by aliens I don't think my family would notice my absence for three days. So if you and Tom wanted to check out the hotel and also have some "couple time", you could come up to my room and then I could go and hang out somewhere else.'

Jane looked up at him. 'Like where?' It sounded almost as if she were challenging him, and after a moment's hesitation he tried to turn it off with a joke about how Tom was surely able to afford to send him out to have some pizza. Jane just kept looking at him, so he felt pressed to come up with other ideas.

'I could go and use the pool myself.' Another thought came to him. 'Or I never mind spending some time hanging out at the public library. Look, that's not the point. Just think about it. It could be a long time before you have another chance like this to check out a fancy hotel.' Sonny struggled to hide his puzzlement at Jane's reaction, when he was just trying to do something nice for her and Tom.

Jane seemed to pull herself together. 'Yeah, I guess that's true. Look, I promise I'll think about it. It's just that with Tom …' She trailed off again.

'Okay', Sonny said. 'But it really is okay if you want to bring Tom around and even have some time there without me. Promise you'll make sure Tom knows that?'

Jane nodded and looked away again, and they finished lunch in silence. Sonny still didn't know why.

* * *

><p>'Mr Morgendorffer? There's somebody at the desk who wants to see you.'<p>

Sonny had wondered why the phone in his room was ringing. Now he understood.

'Excuse me, but I think that must be a mistake. Mr Morgendorffer is my father.'

Sonny heard muffled noises coming through the phone line, and then the concierge was speaking to him again.

'Am I speaking with Mr Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior?'

Sonny was flummoxed. 'Yes, I suppose so, but … there's somebody there who wants to see me?'

'Yes, a Mr Thomas Sloane.'

At that,Sonny understood. This was Tom and Jane's idea of a joke. 'Okay', he said, 'send them up.'

Minutes later there was a knock at his door. 'Come in', he called. 'I've unlocked it.' The door opened and Tom came through it … and shut it behind him.

'Hey, Sonny.'

Sonny narrowed his eyes. After a moment he spoke.

'Hey, Tom. Where's Jane?'

'Ah, I dropped by her place and she was deep in a creative process which involved power tools. I didn't have my safety goggles with me, so I thought I'd drop round here instead and see if you'd mind showing me the place. Jane told me you invited us both round, and I thought if I took a look while she's busy, it would give us something to talk about when we get together later this evening.'

'Oh.' Sonny looked around. 'Well, here's the room. The bathroom's through there if you want to check it out. I guess it's not so much of a much for somebody who's used to your style of living.'

'No, I can see why you thought Jane and I might like it. There's a pool here too, right?'

'Um … yeah. I can take you down to it if you want to see.'

'I figured if we're going to check out the pool we might as well do it properly. You know, swim a few lengths. I've got my swimsuit on underneath so I can just get undressed here before we go down. Can you lend me a towel?'

Sonny nodded, but he was feeling more and more uncomfortable. He had thought that he and Tom had an understanding. They weren't friends. Sonny was just being nice about his best friend's boyfriend. Sure, they'd spent a little time together, but that was hanging out with Jane. There'd been that time at the parade, too, but that had been a mixture of happenstance and practical necessity. Was Tom deliberately trying to hang out with him now? Why? That wasn't part of the deal. But when Sonny tried to open his mouth to say so he felt like a saboteur. He thought of Mrs Bennett's diagram, with its tangle of arrows and lines like badly cooked spaghetti. Whatever, he wasn't going to be the cross. Unless it was the circle he wasn't supposed to be. Whichever.

He flexed his scalp muscles in an attempt to clear his mind. It was like being trapped in a Mystik Spiral song. Meanwhile, Tom had begun stripping down to his swimsuit, which was making Sonny even more uncomfortable. He was being reminded of the locker room during gym class, when he still had to take it. His head started to ache. He cleared his throat.

'Ah … I'll just get a couple of towels from the bathroom. And I guess I'll grab my swimsuit first and change in there.'

Tom just nodded.

In the bathroom, Sonny carefully adjusted his boardshorts to make sure the piercing in his navel was concealed. He wasn't wearing the ring at the moment—he was long past the stage where he had to keep it in continuously to stop the hole closing up—but nobody new was going to see the place. Certainly not Tom.

Then he came out carrying two towels and they went down to the pool.

Sonny still didn't like it. First Jane acting strangely, and now Tom. Maybe it was because they _were _breaking up. If so, Sonny hoped they'd patch things together. He'd finally got used to Tom's being a factor and he didn't want weirdness again.

* * *

><p>When Jane rang up to arrange to come round to the hotel with Tom, Sonny naturally assumed that Tom had told her about his earlier visit. Sonny was bewildered when it came out that he hadn't.<p>

Jane wasn't bewildered, she was cranky.

'So, were you planning on telling me about this?'

'I just did tell you about it. I don't know what Tom was up to, but I'm not keeping any secrets from you.'

There was a moment's silence at the other end of the line before Jane said, 'Yeah, I guess you wouldn't do that.'

'It doesn't make any sense. Tom must have known you'd find out from me.'

'I don't know what Tom's thinking.' Jane sighed. 'What did you two get up to, anyway?'

'Get up to? He checked out the room … we chatted about a book I've been reading, _Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook_, by Edward Luttwak …'

'Sounds like your sort of book.'

'Well, Tom seemed to be interested in hearing about it, unless he was just being polite.'

Jane sighed again. 'No, he probably _was _really interested. Anything else?'

'We went to the pool so he could check that out as well.'

'You went swimming?' Sonny listened as Jane breathed audibly. 'Did you show him your navel ring?'

_Stop it_, Sonny thought. _You're freaking me out. _'Of course not', he said. 'I don't have it in at the moment. And I'm not showing the piercing, ring in or ring out, to _anybody _new. My family still don't know about it, they would still freak if they did, and they could show up at the hotel pool at any time. And I wouldn't do it even if it weren't for that.' _Please. Get a grip. Somebody has to. _'Look, I don't know what the problem is, but don't think that Tom and I are becoming bosom buddies. I thought if I wasn't at odds with him it made things easier for you?'

'If you want to use logic.' Now Jane sounded not cranky, but depressed. 'I don't know. Sometimes I feel like a third wheel in my own relationship, but I don't know whether that makes any sense.'

'Crosses, circles, a tangle of arrows, and wheels?'

'Maybe.' There was a long pause, but the tone in which Jane had uttered that one word made Sonny feel she had something more to say but was still working out what it was. Eventually, she did continue: 'I don't know what to say to you. I hate being like this.'

'I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe you should try something new to break out of the tangle. You rang this time to arrange to come round with Tom, so do that. And I will get out of your way. I've figured out where I'll go while you're here. I'll let you into the room and then I'll go. If you want to go to the pool, or anywhere else in the hotel, and any of the staff make problems for you, just say you're here with the Morgendorffers. I'll fix that with my parents in case they get asked.'

Jane was worried about Jake and Helen's reactions if they thought that Sonny was arranging for Tom and Jane to be alone in his room. Sonny had thought of that. He'd let them think that Tom and Jane might just be going _to the pool_ without him, but not explain that while they were in the hotel he was going to be somewhere else entirely.

* * *

><p>'Hey, Sonny. Janey's not home.'<p>

'Hey, Trent. I know. Jane's over at my hotel, checking it out, with Tom. I was hoping I'd find you home and free for a chat while she's out. I think it might be important.'

Trent remained relaxed as ever, but Sonny knew him well enough to see that he was pausing for longer than was usual before he said, 'Sure, come on in.'

Sonny followed Trent inside and they sat down on the couch.

Without saying anything—without, to be honest, giving any sign of metabolic activity at the waking level—Trent gave Sonny the time and the space to put his words into, when he was ready. Sonny knew Trent was alert in his own completely unchallenging way. Sonny rested one hand on his own midsection, feeling his navel ring through the fabric of his clothes, and gathered himself to speak.

'Jane says that things haven't been going too well between her and Tom.'

'Yeah.'

'She mentioned that to you?'

'No, but I'm a musician. I'm very sensitive to shifts in mood.'

'Oh.' Sonny shifted slightly in his seat. 'Well, Jane's been in a strange mood that I don't understand. She pretty much said the same to me herself. She doesn't know what to say about it, and I don't know how to describe it either, but I thought maybe you might have picked up on something. I know you and Jane are close.'

'You wouldn't be asking me to talk with you behind Jane's back, would you?' Trent still seemed perfectly comfortable. He gave no sign in look or tone that he was rebuking Sonny, but Sonny felt his conscience prick him.

'I don't think that's what I was doing. I don't know what's happening, but I don't want it to be my fault.'

'Nobody said it was, did they? You wouldn't do anything to hurt Janey, would you?'

'Not unless she grew long red hair and began keeping a lip gloss database.' Sonny recognised Trent's look of incomprehension. 'Sorry, in-joke.'

'Oh.' Then Trent took on an unusually serious look. 'It sounds like whatever's happening is feeling hard for you. But you know Janey can look after herself. You need to be sure you know what's in your own mind and your own heart, Sonny.'

_Now Trent's starting to freak me out. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. _'Well, thanks for talking with me, Trent. I guess I better be going now.' Sonny stood up. He felt awkward and wanted to say something more. 'I'll think about what you said.'

'Hey, any time.' Trent stood up and walked Sonny to the door. As Sonny left Trent gave him another serious look. 'I hope you figure out what you need to figure out.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Fire' by Peggy Nicoll<strong>_


	52. Surprise!

**Not So Different**

_**52. Surprise!**_

With the music coming from Jane's room, Sonny wasn't sure whether Jane and Tom heard him when he called out to them. He knocked on the door: no response. He pushed it open.

They hadn't heard him.

He felt as if his tongue had suddenly got too big for his mouth, and his ears and nose too big for his head. Jane and Tom were like two boxers in a clinch and all he could do was wait for the referee to shout, 'Break!'

He must have made some sort of noise, and they must have heard it, because suddenly Tom moved backward as if he were tied to a winch and somebody had tightened it one turn. He and Jane both looked at Sonny with different embarrassed faces and made different embarrassed noises. Jane turned the music off. Nobody knew what to say.

Sonny supposed it would be polite for him to apologise. There wasn't really anything for Tom and Jane to be embarrassed about. Jane put his feelings into words, more or less.

'No biggie. You had to learn about kissing some time.'

Tom, putting a congratulatory hand on Jane's arm, explained that he'd been carried away by the genius of her latest work. Jane turned an easel around dramatically to display it. It was a stylised jungle scene, and through the foliage Jane's head could be seen, only her hair was tiger-striped, more or less, in blonde and her native black.

Sonny said he liked it, but he couldn't help wondering whether it was a cry for help. Tom suggested both reactions might fit. Jane conveyed the slightest hint of irritation that they didn't understand.

'The lady or the tiger—now you don't have to choose', she said.

'Does this mean you'll be ordering the pizza with entrails?' Sonny joked.

Jane responded with great seriousness, and already Sonny had a sick feeling.

'This is going to be my new look. And _you're _assisting in the procedure.'

Sonny looked down uneasily at Jane's finger pointing at him, and then across at Tom, who was smiling. Whatever his girlfriend might have in mind for Sonny didn't seem to bother him.

It turned out that what Jane had in mind for Sonny was for him to help dye her hair to create blonde stripes like the ones in her painting. He'd been afraid of something like that. He tried several times to persuade her of his complete unsuitability for the task, but she refused to let him off. She wanted to create an effect, and the procedure pretty much required her to have somebody else to assist. It would spoil the effect to ask Tom to do it (given that he was the intended prime beneficiary) and, as she said, who else was she going to ask? Trent? That rhetorical question shut Sonny up for a while, and he trailed after Jane to the pharmacy, sadly but resignedly, to buy the hair dye.

He took some slight comfort from the fact that Jane was as appalled as he by the marketing nightmare that was the range of blonde hair dyes on offer. There was a definite rural or agricultural theme, with most of the colours being named to evoke images of bucolic idylls in fields full of beautifully golden grains or other plants. (How golden was heather, though, really? He'd have to look that up.) How were they supposed to choose? He took the opportunity of their shared floundering to suggest again that Jane get help from somebody more suitable, like the girl behind the counter. He figured twenty dollars and a bag of doughnuts would do the trick.

'You know, Sonny, not everybody in the world conducts themselves by the same ruthlessly mercenary principles as you and your family.'

'That's why I threw in the doughnuts. Give the deal a personal touch.'

Jane saw right through Sonny's evasion. She could tell that he was still trying to get out of the mission she had assigned him, and she made it clear that she was listening to no excuses about his lack of aptitude for activities like dyeing hair and painting toenails.

'Look, Sonny, this is the kind of thing that teens do together to cement their friendships. Don't you want to cement our friendship?'

'It's teen girls that do those things together, I think you'll find.'

Jane looked steadily at him. 'And that's supposed to make a difference to _us_ how?'

Sonny couldn't meet her gaze. Jane wanted to look good for Tom. He told himself that he understood that, he really did, he didn't need to be a girl for that. And he'd already decided that if Tom went away it wasn't going to be because of him. Should he be worried that if he did botch the hair dye job it would make Tom go away? That didn't make sense. Tom wasn't like that. So why was he still uncomfortable? It was because Jane was being odd about it. She had a rational case that he couldn't assail, but he felt there was something else going on in her mind behind it.

He was still feeling strange about it when they were assembled in the Lane kitchen for the procedure: himself, Jane, and the volatile chemicals she'd finally fixed on. It was almost as if they _were _two teen girls. Jane sat at the table with a towel over her shoulders looking unusually teen-girl-like, while Sonny, rubber-gloved, held in his arms the mixing bowl full of hell brew and stirred like a chef—or like a teen girl experimenting with cooking and impersonating a chef. He carped again about the harshness of the chemicals, but Jane was having none of it. They had nothing to fear, she insisted, but fear itself.

'I'm sure FDR had teen girl hairstyles in mind when he made that speech', Sonny said, before degrading himself to the point of suggesting that with one phone call he could get the Fashion Club to do the job.

Jane threw her head back, opened her eyes innocently wide, and held her right fist up to her head with thumb and little finger extended to mime a telephone receiver. She dropped and flattened her voice cruelly to sound like Sonny and said, 'Hello, Quinn? It's me, Sonny. Can you help me make my friend look pretty?'

'All right, you bitch', Sonny said like a teen girl. 'What do I do?'

Jane quoted the instructions at him verbatim, but she might as well have been speaking Etruscan. He grunted in incomprehension and she translated.

'Grab a hunk of hair and start painting.'

He grabbed a hunk of hair and started painting.

As far as Sonny ever knew, that was all he did. How the activity translated into the final fateful outcome remained forever an arcane mystery to him. Looking back afterwards, he could not recall any sense of foreboding as he sat by Jane while she kept her hair under a shower cap for the length of time prescribed. If he had believed in omens, he might have thought it ominous that they were watching _Sick, Sad World_, because sick and sad was a pale moon-cast shadow of how he felt when Jane removed the shower cap to reveal, not blonde tiger-like stripes, but irregular patches of murky orange that even somebody as fashion-blind as he could see were hideous.

Unable to disabuse a cheerfully chattering Jane or even to flee (though he would have liked to), he stared fatalistically at the oncoming freight-train of destiny as Jane approached a mirror.

'Aaah! What did you do to me?'

'I told you I was no good at this!'

'Can't you paint a lousy stripe?'

Sonny could feel his face moving and he didn't care. He could only stammer as Jane continued her onslaught.

'You did this on purpose! Because of Tom!'

'Because of _Tom_?' Nothing made any sense any more to Sonny. He just wanted to fix things, but he didn't know how. But Jane just wanted him to get out, and somehow that's what his legs were doing. He couldn't remember how it happened, but he was outside the door of Jane's house, and that door was shut behind him.

It remained shut the next morning when he stopped on the way to school so that he and Jane could walk together. He rang the doorbell, but nobody answered. Trent he didn't expect to be responding to low-level stimuli at this hour of the morning, and Jane's parents might be away again, but where was she? She had to go to school.

But she didn't. When she didn't show up he tried calling from school but there was no answer. He was trying to think what else he could do when Jodie came up to him and asked after Jane. He could only suggest vaguely that she might be sick. Jodie was disappointed. Apparently Jane had been hinting around about her big tiger surprise.

Sonny said, 'Um, the tiger turned out to be more of a penguin with eczema.' He didn't know why he was talking so much to Jodie. If he hadn't been walking so slowly, she'd never have caught him.

If he hadn't been so distracted, he wouldn't have almost blundered into a gathering of the Fashion Club. They were planning a meeting at the Morgendorffers' (at Quinn's) to discuss blushers (the artificial cosmetic kind, of course, not the perfectly natural biological phenomenon). Some things in Sonny's world were still just as normal, meaning bad. He turned round to look for an uninfested hallway in another direction.

'When you talk to Jane', Jodie said as he turned away, 'tell her I hope she feels better.'

'You mean if I talk to her.'

He still _wanted _to talk to Jane. When he got home he tried calling her again, but her phone rang out. After he'd finally hung up himself, he stared at the instrument for thirty seconds and then, for no good reason he could think of, tried calling his mother.

Marianne, his mother's downtrodden secretary, asked him whether it was important, because it wasn't a good time to call. He could hear the distant rumble of his mother ranting in the background. He told Marianne he'd call back.

Still on autopilot, he called the next number that came into his head. Tom answered. Sonny asked him whether he'd heard from Jane, and went on to explain that she hadn't been at school and wasn't answering her phone and he just wanted to make sure she was all right.

'Well, she was all right enough to call me late last night, yelling stuff I didn't understand and making freaky accusations.' Tom wanted to go on to explain at greater length how he felt about that, but Sonny cut him off to say that he was going to try going over to Jane's again to see how she was doing.

'Oh', said Tom, pulling up. 'Oh, yeah.' He paused again. 'Good idea.'

'Yeah', said Sonny. 'Got to go.' He remembered that he should close the conversation properly. 'Bye', he said, and hung up.

This time, when he rang Jane's doorbell, she answered. She looked okay. She'd dyed her hair back to its normal colour.

Sonny gabbled, 'I'm really sorry. I warned you. That doesn't make it any better. I'm sorry. I feel kind of awkward.'

'Really?' Jane said. 'I hadn't noticed.'

They went inside together and sat down on the couch. Sonny asked Jane why she hadn't come to school or even answered the phone.

'To be honest', Jane began, and even before she'd said anything more Sonny was wondering why she'd used those words. Why were they necessary? Why would honesty between the two of them even be in question? Meanwhile Jane went on, 'I've been feeling kind of overwhelmed lately, and after the hair thing and all, I figured I'd give myself a mental health day.'

'Overwhelmed? Why?'

'Why do you think?'

'I don't know. I know something's been wrong, but I can't figure out what it is. I feel like there's something you're not telling me. I got the impression Trent knows something, but he's not telling me either. Tom …' Sonny trailed off.

'Sonny, did you wonder why Tom came round to your hotel room and invited you to go swimming with him and didn't tell me about it?'

'Of course I wondered. I told you then that it didn't make sense, because he must have known you'd find out from me. Tom's been acting strangely. You've been acting strangely. I'm the one who's been just the same as always.'

'Just the same as always, huh?' Jane looked intently at him, making him feel uncomfortable again.

'We've talked about this. I've stopped being hostile to Tom on your account. He knows that doesn't mean we count as friends, because I told him that from the beginning. That's not really a change. I'm still the same.'

'And what's that, exactly?'

'You know this. You know me. Still Sonny Morgendorffer. The same Sonny Morgendorffer. You above all people know.'

'Sonny Morgendorffer, hey?' Jane said, and she looked at him, slowly nodding her head, with the look once again of somebody who knew a secret that he didn't, almost as if it was a secret about himself that he didn't know.

'It's like you're asking me to say who I am. You know who I am. The person who would never screw up your hair on purpose. The person who would never do anything to hurt you.'

Jane nodded again, and her face relaxed. 'Yeah, I know', she said, almost apologetically. 'Well then, hair apology accepted. Life goes on.'

Sonny was so relieved at Jane's apparent return to normal that he asked whether she wanted to get some more dye and have another go.

Jane gave him a challenging stare, but this time it was one he was used to. 'Have you gone completely and utterly mad?'

Later he would remember Jane asking him that question.

* * *

><p>Sonny walked home thinking there was still some secret he wasn't being let into, and found Tom parked in front of his house. Sonny asked him crossly what he was doing there.<p>

'I wanted to talk to you. Your sister said you weren't home so I figured I'd wait out here.'

Sonny figured it was only polite to invite Tom inside, but Tom had been frightened off by the girls rubbing stuff on each other's cheeks and making animal noises. Sonny recognised the description of a Blushathon, and that it would only get worse. He didn't fancy going inside for it either. At Tom's suggestion, he got in the car. He decided it would be okay if they weren't actually going anywhere.

'Did you want to talk about Jane?' he said.

'Nope.'

'If you don't want to talk about Jane, then what game are you playing?' Sonny said, wishing he'd never got into the car. Close quarters were always dangerous. He turned his head to scan his escape route. 'Apart from Jane, I have nothing to talk about with you.'

'Why is everybody so mad at _me_?'

'Why? _Why?_' Sonny decided in that moment that, Jane or no Jane, the time had come when he was really going to open up to this character.'Because I moved to this town and I knew immediately I'd be a total outcast. And in the one moment of good luck I've had in my entire life, I met another outcast who I could really be friends with and not have to feel completely alone. And then you came along and screwed the whole thing up! You twisted me around to be nice to you on her account but everything's gone to hell anyway, and I don't even understand why!'

Tom was not antagonised by Sonny's unleashed hostility. He seemed happy now to talk more freely, and more vehemently too. 'It's not that hard to understand. I met a girl I thought was cool and I went out with her for a while. We started to get bored with each other. It happens all the time and it's nobody's fault.'

He sounded convincing, and Sonny wanted to believe, but—'Oh yeah? Would you still be bored with her if I weren't here to get in the way?'

'Probably', said Tom. 'And more to the point', he said, becoming more emphatic, 'she'd be bored with me. It's got nothing to do with you.' He shook his head decisively.

'Fine. But if you're breaking up with my best friend, Tom Sloane, then we've got nothing to talk about and no reason even to be in the same space.' Sonny started to get out of the car.

Tom reached out a hand, put it on Sonny's shoulder, and said, 'Wait.'

Physically, the touch of Tom's hand on Sonny's shoulder was light. It could never have functioned as any sort of physical restraint. But it still jerked Sonny out of one world and into another.

Since his first serious exchange with Tom, when Tom had just started seeing Jane and wanted to straighten things out with Sonny from the beginning, Sonny had been living in a world where, despite all his prior experience of life, he could, in a particular sense and within limits, trust Tom.

The physical contact snapped him out of that world, back into a world he was more familiar with, where people only approached him physically for one reason. In that familiar world, he knew what came next after somebody put a hand on him. He went limp with recognition. It wasn't something to resist, it wasn't something to argue about. It was just something to be confirmed.

He asked Tom to confirm what came next.

Tom reacted to his simple question with an exclamation of utter astonishment, as if _Sonny _were the one who had jerked _him _into a completely different world, one that was totally alien to him. Sonny couldn't take that seriously; he'd heard it _all _before.

'_What did you say?_'

'_I said, _are you going to hit me?' Sonny repeated. 'I've told you about this. Some guy gets mad at me for something that's not my fault, and he grabs me by the shoulder, and the next thing I know his fists are thudding into me. You told me you're not that type, but so what?' Sonny didn't even bother trying to shake off Tom's grip.

'Sonny, did you not hear what you said?'

'What do you mean?' Sonny was getting tired of this conversation. 'Not hear what?'

As flatly and undramatically as Sonny himself, Tom said, 'You asked me whether I was going to kiss you.'

Sonny gaped. 'What are you talking about? Is there something wrong with your hearing? _Hit. _I said, are you going to _hit_ me?'

Tom shook his head, staring intently into Sonny's eyes, which couldn't turn away. 'The second time, yes, but the first time the words were, are you going to kiss me?'

Sonny couldn't think. He could only see Tom's green eyes coming closer and closer, as his other hand came up to Sonny's other shoulder.

Their lips met, and Sonny's eyelids recoiled from each other. His face did not, however, recoil from Tom's.

He could see that Tom's eyes were closed.

Then Tom's eyes, and his lips, and his hands too, were gone. He was back in his own seat as Sonny regained the power of speech.

'Dammit!' he said. 'Dammit, dammit, dammit!'

'I liked it too', Tom said quietly.

'That's not funny!'

'I know.'

Then they were kissing again. They had moved towards each other this time, and met in the middle. Tom's hands were on Sonny's shoulders again, but now Sonny's were also on Tom's.

Then again they were back in their seats.

'That was definitely not funny', Tom said.

Sonny heard himself say, 'I gotta go', and then he was getting out of the car and fleeing up the path to the house. But there was no sanctuary anywhere.

He got into the house and up the stairs without the Fashion Club noticing, or if they noticed him he didn't notice them noticing. His parents weren't around, either. His mother had a huge case on, her biggest yet, and his father had been busy too with some more consultancy work for that hotel they'd stayed at recently, Le Grand. (Bobby the bellhop had been doing expensive favours for Quinn with a fake story about a non-existent uncle at the hotel giving permission, billing the Morgendorffers, then breaking into the hotel computer system to cancel the charges. When this came out, Jake had seized the opportunity to convince them that as well as improved security they needed a new marketing campaign to offset the bad news stories, and that with his inside knowledge of the incident there was nobody better to handle it.) Sonny got to his room, shut the door behind him, and then … felt as if all his joints had locked up, from his knees up to his jaw. The next thing he was conscious of was lying flat on his back on his bed, staring at the ceiling, still fully dressed, even to his boots.

Time must have kept on passing, but Sonny lost the sense of it. Maybe he slept in snatches that night or maybe he didn't. When he was conscious he stared at the ceiling, which seemed to be going round and round in rhythm with his circling thoughts. He thought of walking in on Jane and Tom kissing, of himself and Tom kissing, of Jane giving him a cryptically significant stare, of Trent sagely counselling him, of Tom in his swimsuit, of Jane asking him whether he'd gone completely and utterly mad, of his navel ring, and then round and round and back and forth and in and out, in an intricate tangle like one of Mrs Bennett's diagrams with circles and crosses and far too many arrows …

Sonny's bladder announced the passage of time, like a clepsydra in reverse. He didn't bump into anything in the dark on his way to the bathroom. The dark was good. He felt his way to the bowl and sat down, clothing lowered, to let nature take its course. After an unmeasured time he looked down at himself. There it was. Funny things, hormones.

He couldn't stay there. He found himself back in his bedroom, clothing back in position, glancing at the clock. It was three in the morning. He lay flat on his back again, feeling as if it would always be three in the morning.

He never remembered noticing that morning's sunrise, or hearing his family stir. His parents were both too busy to notice his disappearance, and Quinn would surely never care. The next information from external reality that he registered consciously was the doorbell ringing.

He could tell from the rhythm that it was the person who would notice his disappearance. He glanced at the clock. She must have come here after school. Had she phoned during the day? He might have failed to hear, screening out the noise as intended for somebody else.

He was halfway down the stairs when the doorbell gave the same familiar ring again.

Then he was standing at the open door with the doorknob in his hand and Jane Lane was staring at him.

'Sonny? Are you all right?'

They were sitting together on the couch. Sonny looked round. One of them must have shut the door. Jane spoke again.

'When you weren't at school today, I didn't think … you look like you could use a whole week of mental health days. Sorry! Sorry! I don't know what to say here! Whatever it is, compadre, you can talk to me, can't you?'

Jane was reaching forward a tentative hand. Sonny had to speak before it connected with his arm. His voice echoed from the bottom of an empty haunted well.

'I kissed your boyfriend. I kissed Tom. I didn't mean to. I still don't understand.'

Jane was up, back, away from him. 'I knew this would happen!' she was saying. 'I knew it!'

Sonny came to himself and stared at her. 'You _knew_.' Jane didn't answer. 'You knew and you never told me. That's what was so strange. So _queer_.'

'That's not what this is about, Sonny! Boy or girl, queer or straight, you kissed my boyfriend behind my back!'

Sonny could feel himself grinning hideously. 'I know. I told you, remember?'

Jane half-turned towards the door. 'I can't talk about this now, Sonny. I have to kill me a Sloane.'

Sonny was still staring at the door that had slammed behind Jane when it opened again and Quinn came through it.

'Sonny? Are you all right?'

* * *

><p>Incredibly, all Tom said when he answered the door to Jane's ring was 'Oh' and then 'Hi!' Jane stared at him in outraged disbelief. 'Oh, hi', she echoed, and then shouted '<em>Go to hell!<em>', before she leaped at him, hammering his chest with both fists. Over his cries of protest she shouted 'How could you? _How could you?_'

At least he didn't pretend not to know what that was about. 'I didn't plan it that way! But Sonny said …'

'_Sonny _said! I thought he didn't even know!' Jane took a step back.

'He didn't! It was my fault!'

Jane turned her head angrily away. 'Oh, don't give me that!'

'He was taken by surprise! We both were! But I was the one who screwed up!'

Jane realised she'd been waving her hands around wildly. She folded her arms. 'Now what?' She threw Tom a challenging look.

'I don't know', he said. 'Do you want to hear what happened?'

Jane didn't want to sit in Tom's house, so they walked silently out to his back yard and sat down on an old wooden swing set, looking away from each other.

'I know what happened. Sonny kissed you. He wasn't at school today, so I went round to his place to check on him. I didn't suspect anything, he just came right out and told me.'

'He didn't kiss me, I kissed him. The first time, anyway. The second time was more kind of mutual.'

Jane looked across at Tom briefly. 'How did you ever get close enough in the first place?'

'I went round to his place to talk to him. At least, I thought I just wanted to talk to him. Maybe I was upset with you because of you ringing me up with all those crazy accusations …'

'_Crazy?_'

'Well, I thought they were crazy at the time. I didn't know what was going to happen. Sonny didn't either. He rang me up yesterday before he went round to your place because he was worried about _you _when you didn't show up at school. He didn't want to talk with me, but he sounded confused. I remember when _I _was confused about my … about myself, and anyway I like talking with Sonny. There's nothing wrong with talking, is there?'

Jane tilted her head sceptically. 'And you only wanted to talk?'

Tom looked away again. 'I thought so. I guess I might have been kidding myself. I'm a real idiot. There's no question about that.'

'Who's arguing? You might as well go on.'

'We sat in my car and all he wanted to talk about was you, and how he'd tried to be nice to me on _your_ account, and how things had still got screwed up and he didn't know why. He guessed there was something that we both weren't telling him.'

Jane took a deep breath. 'I know. But I couldn't tell him. I was only guessing myself.'

'Me too. And I didn't start to tell him either, if you're wondering. But he didn't want to talk with me if you and I were breaking up …'

'What made him think we were breaking up? I told him things weren't great, I didn't say we were breaking up. What did _you _say to him?'

'I was telling him that whatever was happening it wasn't his fault! I could tell him that much, and he needed to hear it. I told him we were both getting bored with each other. You know it's true. We weren't going anywhere. We were about to break up anyway.'

They looked at each other, and then away again. Jane said, 'Yeah.' She sighed. 'Go on. Let's finish this.'

'He didn't want to talk with me and he started to get out of the car, so I put my hand on his shoulder, and _he _thought … he _said _he thought …'

'… that you were going to hit him? Don't look surprised, I know what he's like.'

'Well, what he asked me … what he _thought_ he asked me …'

'He asked you not to hit him?' Jane shook her head. 'No, wait, he wouldn't do that. He asked you whether you were going to hit him, right?'

'That's what he thought he said. But the words that actually came out of his mouth were, "Are you going to kiss me?" He didn't even realise. It was one of those mistakes that isn't really a mistake.'

'I know what a Freudian slip is', Jane said irritably. 'I may not be as smart as Sonny, but you never give me the credit I deserve.'

Tom hung his head. 'Sorry. But then you know what it meant. I told him what he'd actually said, and I looked into his eyes, and I wasn't guessing any more. I _knew_. And once I was sure, I knew that he needed to know, too. Right?' he concluded, lifting his head again and looking straight at Jane.

'Right', she muttered. 'But that doesn't mean you had to kiss him.'

'How do you suggest I was supposed to get the message through to him? With words? You know Sonny, Jane. He always has more words. I kissed him and he knew. That's why he kissed me back the second time.' Tom shrugged and sighed. 'I should have broken up with you first, that's all.'

'You got that right. Look. All that time … were you going out with me just to get to him?'

'Are you crazy?'

'I don't know. Am I?'

Tom winced and the corners of his mouth turned down. 'I know this situation right now is my fault and I brought it on myself, but sometimes it's hard being bi, you know? I told you all about it from the beginning, and how I've dated boys before and girls. Did you think I was making that up?'

'No, I didn't say that.'

'Well, sometimes straight people think we're really gay and just trying to look more acceptable and sometimes gay people think we're really gay and haven't got the courage to admit it. And lots of people think that if we're interested in both we must be interested in both all the time and never able to stick to one person. It's not like that. I didn't spend the whole time we were a couple looking around for a boy to cover my interests on the other side, any more than I got together with you just because I was looking for any girl that came along. I had to tell Sonny that the two of us weren't breaking up because of him and I'm telling you the same. It was over for both of us, wasn't it? You already said that was true.'

Jane just nodded sadly.

'But it started because I really like you, Jane. You're smart and you're funny, you have a great attitude … you do everything on your own terms. You're, like, from a cooler world.'

Jane looked up. 'I am, aren't I?'

'You really are.'

A momentary smile flickered across Jane's face. 'Too bad _you're _such a dork.'

'Yeah, I should have kept the break clean and not dragged Sonny into it.' Tom looked straight at her. 'It's all true what I said, you know. I wasn't dating you just to get to Sonny, but I do like talking to him.'

'Well, that's good, if you're going to get involved with him.'

'I didn't say I was going to get involved with him. I know how anti-social he is.'

'Hey, he's all right. Give him a chance.'

Tom stared at Jane. 'What are you talking about? You _want _me to date him?'

Jane shrugged. 'I don't know.' She stood up quickly and turned to face Tom. 'But you better get over to his place and talk to him. He was in a bad way when I was there.'

Tom stood up as well. 'A bad way? What's wrong?'

'He looked kind of like a zombie. And not the fun kind. Like he hadn't changed his clothes since yesterday. Or washed. Maybe not even moved.'

'What? And you want _me _to go over and talk to him?' Tom shook his head. 'If that's the effect it had the last time we were together, I'm not the person he'll be wanting to see.'

'Hey, you're the new prospective boyfriend. I'm going to be busy looking for a new best friend.' Jane's eyebrows went up as the light dawned. 'You're not expecting me to go and clean up your mess! You broke it, you bought it, buster! The last thing I said to Sonny was that I couldn't talk about this with him because I had to go kill me a Sloane, and I still will if you push me!'

Tom held up his hands defensively. 'Okay then, kill me if you have to, but you still have to go and talk to Sonny afterwards. The first time Sonny showed me how angry he was about my getting between the two of you, I told him it was pretty stupid to think anything could do that, and now I'm telling you the same thing. He's the number one thing you talk about and you're the same for him. You know each other inside out. Whatever happens with me, you're kidding yourself if you think you won't talk to him again. Right now, if he's having trouble coping like you say, then I'm just this person he never thought he liked who's knocked him for a loop, and you're the person he needs to hear saying that it's not the end of the world. Who else do you think is going to help him? His family?'

* * *

><p>'Sonny? Are you all right?'<p>

It had been Quinn coming through the door. Now she was looming over him. He still recognised her. She was asking him what had happened.

Right. Something had happened, all right. As she crouched down in front of him, peering into his face, he said, 'Quinn? If your best friend were going out with somebody and you kissed him, would you tell her?'

'Are you crazy? Why would I do that?' Quinn said. Then she gasped and brought her hand up to her mouth. 'Sonny? Are you saying that … wait! your best friend's Jane, right? And she's dating some boy … you kissed _him_, Sonny!'

Sonny nodded.

'You mean … _really_ kissed him? A _proper_ kiss? You and …'

'His name's Tom', said Sonny.

'And you kissed like …?'

Sonny nodded again. 'Yes, Quinn. That's how we kissed. Just like that.'

'I had no idea that … I never thought that …'

Sonny gave a scary Halloween grin. 'It was news to me too, now that you mention it. All of it. I never even thought I'd enjoy kissing. Anybody.' He looked Quinn straight in the eye. She looked straight back at him.

Quinn's voice dropped to a sympathetic undertone. 'And you told Jane? I guess she didn't take it well, huh? No wonder you look such a mess. So what are we going to do now?'

'I think I need to talk to Mom. Will you help me get there? I'm feeling weak.'

Quinn helped Sonny up. 'Can I give you an expert opinion? You should wash and change first. You don't know how much it helps. Let me take you upstairs. You can choose any outfit you like. Just my luck', she said, as she steered him towards the staircase, 'to get the only gay brother with no fashion sense. I guess I don't have a guardian angel after all. I guess neither of us does. But', she said as she helped him up the stairs, 'we still have each other.'

* * *

><p>Sonny sat watching as Quinn pushed open the door of their mother's office. He'd already told her that he was going to talk with Helen one-to-one. She'd said that was good, because then she could go and take care of some other things, but she'd insisted on speaking to Helen first, and he hadn't had the will to argue.<p>

'Quinn?' he heard his mother say. 'Didn't my secretary tell you that I can't be interrupted for anything?'

'Mom, Sonny needs to talk to you. I just brought him here. It's important.'

'Sonny? What's wrong? Couldn't he get here on his own? Is he badly hurt?'

'It's not like that, Mom. He just has some things he needs to talk to you about. And I have some other things I have to go and do.' She looked round at Sonny and then back into the office. 'I just wanted to tell you first that today Sonny's my brother and I don't care who knows it.' She turned round to Sonny and said, 'Free pass for now. Enjoy it while it lasts.' Then she walked off. Sonny didn't watch her go, because from behind her his mother emerged from her office.

'Sonny? Are you sure you're all right?'

'Not exactly all right, but then when am I ever?' Sonny said. He thought of Quinn for a moment. She'd been right about getting washed and changed. 'Is there any chance we could get something to eat and drink while we talk? I haven't had anything for … a long time.' He looked in the direction Quinn had gone. 'But I think my appetite might be coming back.'

* * *

><p>'Hey, Janey!' Trent called from the door. 'Sonny's sister's here to see you!'<p>

Jane looked up. _Quinn? What was Quinn doing here? This has to be the worst timing ever. _There was only one way to deal with it, through. She levered herself upright and made her way towards the door.

Quinn met her halfway, and Jane told her at once that whatever Quinn wanted, she really wasn't up to talking about it at the moment.

Quinn said, 'I know it must be hard for you being totally treacherously stabbed in the back by my brother like that.'

Jane took a step backward. 'So … you know about that.'

'It's not the kind of thing he keeps secret. He told you, didn't you? I wouldn't have, I think it's crazy, but then that's crazy Sonny for you, isn't it? It's all those books he reads. If I kissed Sandi's boyfriend, or Stacy's or Tiffany's, I wouldn't tell them. Why would I want to do that? That's what I said to Sonny, but …'

Jane cut her off. 'You didn't come round here to give me Quinn Morgendorffer's introductory lesson on sneaking round behind your friends' backs, did you.'

Normally when Quinn was caught out getting carried away like that, she giggled. Jane noticed that she didn't.

'Sorry. No, I came round here because if I found out that _my _best friend had kissed _my _boyfriend behind my back—not that I _have _a steady boyfriend, but if I _did _have one—sorry, if that happened to me I'd tell her that I never want to see her or talk to her again.' When Jane said nothing, Quinn carried on. 'Of course, just because I _said _that wouldn't have to mean it was true, because there might be more important reasons to make up with my best friend than just fighting over some stupid boy. I mean, if you break up with a boy, that's it, you can't go back, because that just makes you look cheap, but if you have a fight with your best friend, you can always make up, because that's how it works when you're best friends, you fight and then you make up and then that makes you best friends. So if you've, like, broken up with Tim, well, that's over, but if you've had a fight with Sonny, well, that's not like breaking up with a boy, even though Sonny actually is a boy, but now it turns out that he's, well, you know, gay, and so it's not like you were ever dating, not that you were anyway, but now if you make up with him it's not like making up with a boyfriend, it's like making up with a best friend, which you two are, so, maybe you should think about it? I mean, even if you told him that you never wanted to see him or talk to him again, doesn't mean it has to be true, but Sonny might not know that, because he's never had a friend before, and maybe you haven't either, so maybe you don't know that either.'

This time when Quinn paused for breath, Jane held up both hands to stem the flow for a moment while she gathered herself. Then she said, 'So the only reason you've come round here today is out of selfless concern for me. And your … distant cousin.'

Now it was Quinn who took a moment to answer. 'Today, Sonny's my brother and I don't care who knows it. But I'm only his sister. He still needs his best friend.'

Jane pulled a face. 'If it matters that much to you, I didn't tell him that I never wanted to see him again. In fact, I already went round to your place to talk to him, even though I didn't know what I wanted to say. But there was nobody home.'

'When I got home, he asked me to take him to talk with Mom. He's probably still with her.'

'He's telling Helen? How's that going?'

'I don't know. I left and came here. That's another reason you should come round again after he gets home. I'll give you a call to let you know they're back. Nobody will pay any attention if I get on the phone.'

Jane squared her shoulders. 'Thanks. I already knew I kind of had to talk to him again. Tom told me too.'

'That's the other reason I came round. I need to know about this Tom. Can you give me his address?'

Jane couldn't help it. She felt like grinning again. 'You're going round to see Tom? I wish I could get to watch. You have to promise to tell me about it afterwards.'

* * *

><p>'I guess you can stop worrying that you've sold out on your 1960s ideals, Mom. You've just found out that your son's gay and you haven't turned a hair.'<p>

'Well, Quinn made it pretty clear that she wouldn't tolerate any other reaction', said Helen, giving a fleeting smile. 'It's nice to think that I don't have to be ashamed of the way either of my kids has turned out.'

'I don't know about that. I kissed my best friend's boyfriend.'

'Don't be too hard on yourself, Sonny. This is bound to be a confusing time for you. All these new feelings …'

'No, Jane was right. Gay or straight, boy or girl, I was her best friend and I kissed her boyfriend behind her back. "Confusing" doesn't cover it. I hurt her badly, it's that simple.' He sighed. 'From the first time I saw Tom I felt things were going to get screwed up somehow. Maybe part of me knew all along. I remember that the first things I noticed about him were his eyes and his hair, the way they looked, but I told myself that it was Jane who must be thinking they were "cute".'

'Sonny, do you remember talking once about how it was easy for you to be honest, to look around you and describe what you see?'

Sonny nodded.

'Well, wouldn't you rather know than not know?'

'That I'm gay, you mean?' He scratched behind his ear. 'I have to say yes.'

'Speaking of honesty …' Helen cleared her throat. 'Are you worried about people's … reactions? I know you don't like talking about this, but …'

'You mean, am I worried about people bullying me for being gay if I don't keep it secret? Mom, people have been bullying me for being gay since I was in … third grade, I think, I'd have to check my files, but it was before they even knew what "gay" meant. If it isn't that, it's something else, and if I can't cope by now, well …' Sonny paused. 'With you and Quinn knowing, there's just one person's reaction that's on my mind now.'

'Sonny … your father gets worked up about nothing sometimes, but he's a good man. He believed in the same 1960s ideals I did. And he's absolutely determined never to treat his own children the way his father treated him.'

Sonny looked his mother in the face. Why had they never talked like this before? He realised that it was his fault, not hers. At least he'd had enough sense to come to her now. 'I know', he said. 'But … well, he's never favoured me over Quinn, he's always been scrupulously fair about that, but it's obviously important to him to have a _son_, his _boy_. And now, even if he doesn't come right out and say it, he might feel I've messed that up for him. He even passed on his own name to me.'

'He was insistent about that', Helen said reflectively, and then, apologetically, 'and when you've just given birth, Sonny, this amazing wave of tenderness and affection comes over you. The emotional state I was in, there was just never a question in my mind about it.'

'I'm not blaming you', Sonny said without emphasis. 'I'm not even blaming him. What's in a name? It's just now it'll be like I'm telling him that it's the end of the line.'

'Sonny, you don't have to tell him yourself. I know it's been hard for you, telling Jane, and Quinn, and me. I can talk to your father for you.'

Sonny raised his eyebrows. 'You don't think I'll let you get away with that, do you? After telling Jane and Quinn and you I have to tell him myself.'

His mother smiled. 'I know. Of course. But I can see you understand why I had to say that.'

* * *

><p><em>Nobody told me how rich this Tim was, I mean Tom<em>, Quinn thought to herself as she waited for somebody to answer the doorbell. The house and the grounds were amazing. No wonder Tom didn't go to Lawndale High.

The boy who answered the door, now that she took the time to size him up, didn't look too bad either, although he obviously paid as little attention to his clothes as Sonny did. Still, if neither of them cared, maybe that would make them a good match. She was still thinking about how his appearance could be improved with a little effort as she launched herself into speech with practised technique before he could get a word in.

'Hi, I'm Sonny's sister Quinn. You must be Tom. Sonny hasn't had any practice dating boys so I thought it would be a good idea for me to come and size you up on his behalf before you get involved.'

'Um … I'm not sure what you think you've heard …'

'You don't want to start any gossip. That's good. I'm not going to either. It's probably better if a lot of stories don't start going around. Sonny told _me_ all about it, how the two of you kissed behind Jane's back. I guess you know it's been a shock to him, because he didn't know until now that he was interested in boys, if you know what I mean, which obviously you do. Also he's been such good friends with Jane. _You _aren't going to try to split them apart, are you?'

Tom stammered that he wouldn't, not if he could help it.

'Okay, that's good too. Now I left him talking to Mom and then probably Dad will have to be told about it later as well. So it might be a good idea if you waited a little while before you contacted him, just to give things time to settle. If he starts wondering why you haven't called him, I'll tell him that it was all my idea, because that's what I think is best, based on my experience of dating. I don't know about you yet, but I think with somebody like Sonny it's best to go slow. But you should definitely call at some point. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. If you're worried about how my parents react, you can call up and ask for me. You don't even have to give your name. Calls to our house from strange boys asking for me are something that everybody's used to, including me. Then I can give your messages to Sonny if that helps at all. That's all I can think of at the moment, so here's our phone number, in case you don't have it already. Maybe you can give me yours so I can call you if there's anything you need to know? I forgot to ask Jane for it, and I don't want to ask Sonny.'

Tom blinked and nodded.

* * *

><p>Sonny heard Quinn calling to him from the front door. 'It's your friend Jane! She's here to talk to you!' By the time he reached the living room Quinn already had Jane seated on the couch with a glass of water in front of her. As soon as he came in, Quinn left them.<p>

Sonny sat down as Jane broke the silence.

'You're looking better.'

'You're looking … not as angry as before.'

'Yeah.' Jane nodded. 'That's about right. Not as angry as before.'

They looked away from each other, then glanced at each other again, then away again.

Jane said, 'I broke up with Tom, but not because of you. I think you need to know that. We would have broken up anyway.'

'That doesn't change what you said before. You were angry because I kissed your boyfriend behind your back. I did do that. You may have broken up now, but that doesn't retroactively let me off the hook.'

Jane cleared her throat. 'Changing the subject from the past to the future, are you planning to date Tom now?'

'Why, have you got some friendly warnings to give me about all his faults? Still angry enough to want to twist the knife? Not that I don't deserve it, but I can't think about that now. I'm confused enough as it is.'

'I guess you're bound to be confused. Are _you_ still angry at _me_ about that?'

Sonny stared at Jane. 'Me? Angry? At you? I'm the bad guy here, didn't we get that much clear? What is it I'm supposed to be angry at you about?'

'About … not being told … stuff. You know. "You knew and you never told me!" That's what you said to me.'

'Oh. That.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'You can come out and say it, you know. I'm gay. Plus, I suppose, Tom's bi. I'm not angry about your not saying anything. I just don't understand. Maybe if I did I would be angry. Maybe you should think about that before you say anything else.'

'If I don't tell you now, when will I tell you?'

After another moment's silence, Sonny said, 'Yeah. Go on.'

'I … where should I begin?'

'Do what the King of Hearts told the White Rabbit to do. Begin at the beginning, go on until you come to the end, and then stop.'

'Well, the beginning has to be when you arrived in Lawndale—and at the beginning the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing genuinely wasn't an issue. It's like we told the Gupty kids later on when we babysat them—just because a boy and a girl are friends, it's not the same thing. I mean, the first thing I thought when I noticed you was that you could be an interesting person to be friends with, like outcasts together, and I would have thought the same if you'd been a girl, or if I'd known you were gay, or if _I _had been the one who was gay, or whatever. We hung out together, and that was cool, and I started sketching and painting you, and that was cool too, because you made an interesting subject from an artistic point of view. And then we went to Brittany's party together, but it wasn't a date, because you don't date. I got that, but it made me start thinking. I mean, it made sense as part of the whole anti-social "go to hell" aspect of the Sonny Morgendorffer persona, but did you ever really mean that you weren't going to date anybody ever, your whole life? Do you think?'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'I'd have to say that I didn't let myself think. And I suppose now we can both see another possible reason I compartmentalised like that.'

'Well, if we're taking the story in order, we haven't got to the revelation yet, right? You remember at Brittany's party I went off to the make-out room with that big-headed boy?'

Sonny nodded and Jane continued.

'Well, you made your attitude pretty clear, and it was also clear that you weren't jealous in any way and that whatever you thought you weren't going to disown me as a friend just because of my getting involved with a boy—if I did get involved. So I felt like it was clear how things could work, without actually discussing it. We would be friends, and if I got involved with a boyfriend I would, and we'd just go on being friends in a completely platonic non-romantic way. But I also figured that whatever you _said_ at that stage of your life, things might change later on and you might get into dating or whatever. So I figured we could handle that if it came up later on, but the friendship was important to me either way. I never saw our friendship as something that got in the way of my taking an interest in boys, and anything else that might happen between the two of us was just that, something that might happen or that might not, and there was no reason having that possibility in the background should hurt our friendship, which was the most important thing.'

'Also', and here Jane shifted in her seat, 'that night was the first time you were around Trent, and the first time I noticed how you reacted to him strangely.'

'I explained th—wait, Trent? Are you trying to tell me that Trent … that Trent is …'

Jane shook her head violently. 'No! Don't get me wrong. Trent isn't gay … or bi. But he's relaxed about it.'

Sonny raised his eyebrows. 'Trent's relaxed about everything.'

'Yeah, but … well, like I said, he's not into men, but he has had to deal once or twice with men having crushes on him. I don't mean that you ever had a crush on him, I mean not an actual crush as such, because how could that ever happen? I mean, if you didn't even know about it, or even about the possibility of it, which you didn't, it couldn't really be a crush. And I do believe what you said about that first time, that you were thinking about how he might be reacting to a boy being around his little sister, because of those other experiences you'd had, and maybethat's all it was to begin with. But later … well, let's keep this in order. You remember when we were going to go to Alternapalooza? You got dressed up for the event to be "alternative". The "alternative" Sonny Morgendorffer. What did you think about that?'

'I … guess I didn't think about it too much.'

Jane nodded knowingly. 'Well, the truth is I was thinking it might be … not exactly a date, as such, but maybe an "alternative" date? I mean, going to a music festival can be the kind of thing that people do for a date, but it can also be something where a bunch of friends just hang out together. I was thinking that maybe if we got to the festival we might see another side of Sonny Morgendorffer. Just a possibility to keep open, if you see what I mean. You know that didn't work out. But even without getting there I could see you were feeling uncomfortable with the whole situation, and I started to feel bad because I'd got you into it—and I did wonder whether you were feeling as if I'd tricked you into going on a not-exactly-a-date with me and resenting it. At the same time, I could see you reacting to being around Trent, and Trent could too. Say what you like about my brother, as a person just to be around he makes things very easy. So—I dunno, maybe that's all it was. But maybe you were feeling comfortable picking up some sort of gay-friendly vibe from him. All I know is that after that Trent and I both began to—well, just to wonder.'

'Have you told Trent?'

'You mean about what's just happened today? Not so far. But back then, and since then too, we were both thinking along more or less the same lines and we talked about it sometimes. And we both knew that there was just no way we could say anything to you. Paint the picture in your mind. Trent says to you, "Sonny, have you ever wondered whether you might be gay?", and you say, "If you're trying to hit on me, Trent, forget it". Or I say to you, "Sonny, have you ever wondered whether you might be gay?", and you say, "Because that would be the only explanation for my not falling for your irresistible charms". I can just hear the way you'd say it, can't you?'

Sonny nodded slowly. 'You know me too well.'

'It's kinda like something somebody said to me about you, like it'd be no use trying to get through to you with words, because you've always got more words.'

_Somebody, _Sonny thought. _Tom, obviously. Well, he found a way to get through to me, didn't he?_

Jane continued. 'It's not even as if we were sure it was true. Suppose we said something to you and we were wrong? Right or wrong, it couldn't work. So all we could do was go on as if we didn't suspect anything. But we did suspect. I guess I don't have to go over all the details of every occasion, because once you actually start thinking about it I bet you'll figure out all the different pictures. Like that business with Ted, and your rash, and your piercing, and the time when Trent and I stayed over at your place. Although now that I think about it I remember there's one thing you probably won't figure out by yourself, but Trent and I both noticed your reaction when Monique showed up to go out on a date with him.'

'Monique? You mean, because I was seeing somebody going out on a date with Trent?'

'That too, but what you don't know and probably won't figure out is that Monique is bi, which might affect the vibe you pick up from her, and from Trent as well.'

'Oh.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'I suppose it might.'

'Well, anyway, the next thing was that Tom came into the picture.' Jane stopped to clear her throat and take a drink of water.

'Like I said before, I had my ground rules clear in my own head. If you _weren't _gay, maybe there'd be a time when we'd be something else as well as friends. But, on the other hand, maybe you were gay, and even if you weren't, maybe nothing else would ever happen. So there wasn't a reason why I couldn't play the field if I wanted to, not from my end and not from yours, either. Like that time at the dance when you went out to leave me alone with two boys that neither of us knew then were Ruttheimers, or the time when you were almost manoeuvring to set up Ted and me. Even when that business happened with the track team, it wasn't any possibilities between me and Evan that were an issue for you. So here's Tom, and why shouldn't I date him? Then unexpectedly you did start acting like a jerk about it, but then you realised what you were doing and we got past that. I don't know, there's no way I can know or maybe even that you can, but maybe another reason you acted that way was that you were already somehow picking up on something about Tom that made you feel awkward?'

'What about you?' Sonny said. 'What did you know about Tom?'

'Oh, he was up front with me from the beginning. He doesn't make a point of hiding his orientation. On the other hand, it'd be an odd sort of thing to bring up for no reason in the middle of a conversation, especially the kind of conversation he'd have with you.'

'And maybe you had more than one reason for not bringing it up with me?'

Jane shrugged. 'Maybe. Anyway, after Tom had spent a little bit of time with you, he began to guess that you might be gay. It makes sense that he'd be sensitive to that kind of thing. He's told me that it took him a bit of time to figure himself out, and he sympathised with the possibility that you might not have things clear in your own head. I never said anything about it to him until he brought it up first, just as a guess, and then I told him that I'd wondered once or twice myself, and when he saw I was curious he discussed the whole subject with me, I mean in general terms. And then … well, then things started to go not so well with Tom and me, like I told you, and it's true that it wasn't because of you. But you and Tom did seem to be getting on a little better, and I did start to wonder about whether anything might start happening between the two of you. And what was I supposed to do? If you were my best friend and a girl, I could maybe say to you, "Don't steal my boyfriend away from me", and then you'd tell me that was paranoid craziness and you weren't going to date anybody, let alone go after your best friend's boyfriend, but at least then it would all have been out in the open.'

'But you were trapped', said Sonny, as more things started to make sense to him. 'You couldn't say that stuff to me because of the things I didn't know and you couldn't tell me. At that point you couldn't even tell me Tom was bi, because I'd start asking you why you were telling me that and what made you think I'd be interested in knowing.'

Jane nodded sadly.

'You just had to wonder to yourself about whether your suspicions were crazy', Sonny continued. 'Now all that stuff that baffled me before makes sense. Everything you said to me, and Tom, and Trent. But where do we go from here?'

'I was hoping _you_ knew. I mean, does the whole "Sonny Morgendorffer doesn't date" thing still apply now that you know? The truth is, you and Tom have a lot in common, but if the two of you start dating, I honestly don't know how I'm going to feel about it.'

'That makes two of us. But … you and Tom may be right that I'm not going to find my way out of this mess with just words. Maybe dating Tom will be the way I find out how this whole … thing … works. I just hope you don't hate me.'

Jane didn't answer for a while. Then she said, 'I think the two of us are going to have to spend some time apart getting used to whatever happens next. Tell me, why did you even get into his car?'

'The only thing on my mind was you!' Sonny said, but then he paused and shook his head. 'As far as I knew. But what do I know about myself? I have to stop hiding this stuff, that's one thing for sure.'

'How's that going so far? Not hiding, I mean. Quinn's being … it's like she's a different person.'

'I know. It's scaring me. She's making me feel that maybe it's more comfortable being her distant cousin than her brother. But I think she'll go back to more-or-less normal for her before too long.' Sonny shook himself. 'I've talked with Mom, too, and that worked out … well, actually.' His eyes narrowed with concentration. 'I haven't talked with Dad yet, though. I don't know how _that's _going to go. If I can meet the challenge of getting him to focus his attention enough to understand what I'm talking about … I don't know what comes next.'

* * *

><p>— <em>Hello?<em>

This is Jane speaking, Tom.

— _Oh, hi, Jane. Ah … was there something in particular you wanted to say to me?_

I talked to Sonny, like you suggested.

— _And … ah … how was that?_

Well, you were right. He needed to hear from me. I couldn't honestly tell him that I'm happy about what's happened, but we said the things we needed to say to each other. Next thing, though, you do need to talk with him.

— _Um … are you saying that dating is the right thing for us to do after all?_

That's not for me to say, Tom. The two of you will have to work that out for yourselves. But you do need to talk with him—probably not straight away, because he's got his family to deal with first. But whatever happens, he's got a lot of new stuff to work out, stuff that you know about personally, and who else do you think is going to help him with it? His father?

* * *

><p>Sonny didn't know what his nervously grinning father was going to say to him. He had speculatively entertained a few possibilities—but the words that actually emerged were not among them, although completely in character.<p>

'Am I _supposed _to be bothered by this?'

In a way Sonny found it reassuring that the fog of Jake Morgendorffer's cluelessness had not been dispelled even by finding out that his firstborn son and heir (and namesake) was gay, but after talking with his mother he found that he didn't want to miss this chance to get through to his father, no matter what happened. 'It's not about "supposed to", Dad, it's about what you actually feel.'

'But you're my son!' his father said, sticking to basic information that even he couldn't get wrong. 'You're my boy! You know how I feel about my boy!' Suddenly he shrank in on himself. 'Don't you?"

To his surprise, but strangely not to his displeasure, Sonny found himself in the position of wanting to offer reassurance instead of wanting to receive it. Unfortunately, how he could do so was one of the things he was still unsure about himself. 'I'm sorry, Dad', he said. 'I'm confused. I'm still not sure exactly how I feel myself about finding out I'm gay. If I'm still your boy, I'm glad. But … I couldn't help thinking about the different ways different fathers might react.'

'That's my boy! You're so smart, always thinking about different things. I've always known that. But you've got this father, not a different father. Not a father like "Mad Dog" Morgendorffer, for example! We know what that narrow-minded old bastard would have said, don't we! Curse you, old man! I wouldn't treat my son the way you'd treat me! I wouldn't pack him off to military school at the drop of a hat! Do you know what it's like at military school, Sonny? Do you know what would happen to you there?'

Under normal circumstances, Sonny would have treated his father's question as a purely rhetorical part of one of his regular rants. But as things were …

'I guess people would pick on me. That's what happens to me everywhere else.'

'That's right! That's my boy! You always know the answers.' Sonny's father smiled at him with what most people would still have thought was just his clueless way. But Sonny was beginning to consider the possibility of something else lying behind it when his father went on to say, 'Don't you?'

A week ago, Sonny reflected, he would either have said nothing at all or else come up with some wisecrack like, _For the written, yes, but sometimes I choke in the practical_. But now he figured that if his father remained genuinely oblivious, he had nothing to lose by giving a straight answer—and maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing if it opened up a serious line of communication.

'Well … I don't know all the answers about military school. You actually went there, I didn't. Sure, I can figure that I would have been picked on, and I can figure that other people do get picked on there, but I don't suppose that's the whole story. I know you talk about it sometimes, but just in bits and pieces, and …' Sonny was looking for a tactfully worded way to say that his father didn't so much talk about his time at military school as rant about it, when his father surprised him by cutting in.

'… and there's some things I've never told you about. Or anybody. But, uh ….'

Sonny could see his father starting to stutter and leaped in to rescue him. 'Dad, you don't have to tell me any secrets if you don't want to.'

'I don't have a secret, Sonny. There are just some things I've never talked about because they've never come up, that's all.'

'Never? Not even with Mom?'

Jake shook his head. 'But I'm not keeping secrets from her. If you want to talk with your Mom about what I tell you, that's up to you.'

Sonny nodded soberly and gave full attention as his father continued to speak.

'At military school …', Jake began, and then Sonny saw him break off from the first stage of an incipient rant, gather himself together, and begin again with the same words in a different manner, one Sonny had seldom seen from him.

'At military school, it's all boys and no girls. And while you're boarding there, it's all boys and no girls all the time. I know you've got the brains to figure out some of what that means if you put your mind to it, but probably you never have. They say that same-sex crushes are part of a normal phase of adolescence for a lot of kids, boys and girls, but …'

Sonny had to interrupt. 'Dad, I'm not crushing on Tom. I didn't even like him … well, I didn't think I liked him much, until … well, I told you about that. I mean, I must have had some kind of feelings dammed up inside me that I was hiding even from myself, and then they came out like the dam was burst by a blockbuster bomb. I just don't think that's the way crushes work.'

'I'm not trying to tell you that you're wrong about yourself. You'll have to find out about yourself for yourself, and if you get any help it'll be from somebody like this Tom of yours, not me. I'm just telling you some things I learned at military school. I'm sure you'll see at once from what I said about military school that if same-sex crushes are a normal part of adolescence for some people, there are bound to be a lot more of them at military school, some more serious and some less so. A lot of the time they have to be hidden from the people around you, because when they happen, or even when people suspect they happen, they can lead to people being bullied. And although you know a lot, from hard experience, about different ways of being bullied, and although you've probably figured out that lots of bullying goes on at military school, maybe you haven't thought about how it's an environment for a lot of sexual bullying.'

Sonny was jolted. 'Dad, you've never said … were you …' He trailed off as his father shook his head.

'No, I'm talking about the whole picture as well as just myself. I did get picked on at military school, but more by some of the adults than by other cadets. I got some protection against them, at least for a while. You see, although military school is a place where it can be hard to hide things from other boys, and also a place where it can sometimes be risky if you don't hide certain things, it's also a place where it can be easier for boys who really are gay, or bisexual, or going through an adolescent phase, or just curious …'—and Jake paused momentarily to look down and then back up at Sonny—'… to find each other.'

Sonny had no trouble now making the deductions which he could see his father expected from him. After a moment's pause for digestion, Jake resumed.

'We didn't seem to have much in common. He was popular with everybody at Buxton Ridge, good at all activities, a highly efficient cadet, and a big sports star—football and boxing. But he liked me!' Decades of surprise rang in Jake's voice. 'I still had a bad time there, but it would have been worse for me without him.'

Jake shrugged. 'I don't know. We lost touch after Buxton Ridge. Maybe I was just going through a phase, or maybe there was just something special about that person at that time in that situation, or maybe I actually am bisexual, like your Tom. It's never been important to me to find out. Once I met your Mom … there's never been anybody else for me. I knew there'd been other people in her life before me, and she knew the same about me, but neither of us ever felt any need to know details.' He looked at Sonny in silence for a moment. 'Now is the time to talk about it, and you're the person to tell. I've still got some stuff from Buxton Ridge in some boxes in the garage if you're interested.'

Sonny nodded and stood up, and his father led him to the garage, where he pulled a box from a high shelf, opened it, and rummaged through it until he found an old yearbook. He opened it and handed it to Sonny, pointing at a photograph. 'Here he is.'

As his father kept looking through boxes, Sonny studied the photograph. It didn't tell him much about its subject, so instead he studied the name beneath it: Rutherford Grey VI. He tried it out a few times beneath his breath: 'Ruthehr-fourd. Ruth-er-ford. Ruth'f'd.' Then he tilted his head to one side and studied the photograph again. Aloud he said, 'I suppose people called him something for short, like "Ford".'

Without turning his head, Jake answered: 'No, everybody always called him "Sonny".'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Dye! Dye! My Darling' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	53. Coming To Terms

**Not So Different**

_**53. Coming To Terms**_

School was packing up for summer.

Helen Morgendorffer was still working hard on her big case.

Jake Morgendorffer was still working hard for Le Grand Hotel.

And neither of them had noticed that Sonny had no plans to work hard over the summer. Or, indeed, to work at all. For the first time he could remember, his mother had not lined up a tedious summer activity for him. No music lessons, no summer camp—Sonny suppressed a shudder at the recollection of Camp Grizzly—no nothing.

Of course, if he kept dating Tom, it might possibly mean hard work figuring out the whole 'being gay' thing, and feelings and stuff, but … he put that whole subject firmly out of his head. He definitely didn't want it there while he was trying to smooth things down with Jane. She hadn't laughed or snorted or even smirked at one thing he'd said since Tom had broken up with her and started dating him. He shouldn't have kissed Tom behind her back, he'd admitted that to her, and he'd apologised, and she knew what a shock the whole thing had been to him. If she didn't want him to date Tom, wouldn't she just say, 'I don't want you to date Tom'? But she hadn't. He started to raise his hand to scratch behind his ear and then dropped it. Hadn't he just decided to put the whole business out of his head? He did it again, more firmly still, and concentrated on Jane. She was walking just a step ahead of him. She'd been doing that a lot lately. He didn't try to catch up and get back in step with her, because if he did that she'd just speed up the minimum required to make sure she still stayed one step ahead of him. That was a contest he could never win.

He tried for a wisecrack instead, suggesting that he was finding out what it felt like to be a Lane. Jane's first response was in kind.

'That can't be, since it's only afternoon and you're already out of bed.'

Encouraged, Sonny went on to explain that with the absence of parental involvement in his life, he was turning into Jane.

'Well', she replied, 'you've got so much else of mine, you might as well have my identity.'

_Okay, _thought Sonny, _this is now officially not going well. _Aloud, he said, 'That would be your straight identity, would it?'

Jane looked over her shoulder at him and grimaced, then shook her head, before announcing that, unlike him, she did have summer plans. She'd been accepted into a two-month program at an artists' colony run by somebody who used to be in a commune with her mother, and she'd be painting and sculpting her heart out.

Sonny had enough trouble sounding enthusiastic on the rare occasions when he actually was enthusiastic. He couldn't make his congratulations sound sincere. He'd got the point at once: for two months Jane would be away from Lawndale and away from him. She wouldn't even respond to his endeavours to extract information about the location of the artists' colony. She just told Sonny that with her away he'd have that much more time for his 'budding social life'.

Now it was Sonny's turn to grimace. She'd been like this ever since the whole thing with Tom had started. He'd have thought, in the circumstances, that a friend could cut a friend just a little bit of slack.

* * *

><p>Sonny's mother couldn't stay ignorant of the approach of the school's summer vacation forever.<p>

It was Sonny's father becoming comically alarmed about the sell-by date on a box of food he'd just eaten from that alerted her, but if it hadn't been that it would have been something else—quite possibly some other random raving from her husband. Failing that, Sonny knew, he could never count on Quinn to keep her mouth shut.

Once Sonny's mother had registered the significance of the arrival of June, she wanted to know what Sonny was doing for summer. Sonny had foreseen this moment, but the only tactic he had prepared was to stall by lying that he had a job. Naturally his mother wanted to know exactly what it was.

'I'm sorry', Sonny lied again, 'but the confidentiality agreement I signed with the government prevents me from revealing that. I've already said too much.'

'Sonny, I'm serious. I'm not going to let you sit around the house all summer.'

'Fine. I'll lie around the house all summer.'

Sonny didn't really expect that to get him off the hook, but at that moment Quinn came into the room and their mother redirected her fire to an easier target. Now that she was on a roll, she wanted to know what Quinn would be doing for summer. Quinn started babbling about disappointing test scores; the solution turned out to be a tutor over the vacation; and further discussion of Sonny's summer was averted. He was still worried, though. He couldn't keep stalling forever. Fortunately he only needed to keep stalling for a couple of months.

* * *

><p>Sonny's summer was still unblemished by plans on the very last day of school, which was also the very last day he'd have the chance to talk with Jane before <em>her <em>summer plans kicked in. When he put it to her, she purported to be ready to talk—but not about 'the Tom thing'.

'If you're still upset about it, we should deal with it now', Sonny said. 'Especially since we won't be seeing each other all summer.'

'You don't get it, do you? I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to think about it. I told you, I'm not mad at you about Tom. Now let it freaking go, okay?'

Sonny tried at least to get her to let him buy her a good-luck pizza before her departure for her big art adventure, but she just rejected him again. As he watched her go, he thought to himself, _Well, I hope I never see you when you _are _mad at me about Tom. _Then he remembered that he _had_, and just what that was like.

* * *

><p>Helen found Jake in the living room. She wanted to have a serious talk with him. Much to her relief, he had shown no signs of being even remotely troubled about Sonny's dating a boy, but now they were going to meet this Tom for the first time, and she didn't want Jake to embarrass his son by getting nervous and crazy. The only thing he seemed to be able to focus on, though, was the story Sonny had told him about Tom's having no vocal cords. Helen tried to make him understand that had been Sonny's bizarre idea of a joke; when she couldn't get through to him, she just told him to say nothing.<p>

Jake said, 'So he won't feel self-conscious about the vocal cords, right?'

Then the doorbell rang.

Helen answered it and welcomed Tom inside. Jake leapt up to introduce himself, and Tom's response was the first time Helen heard his surname, Sloane. It was a name that immediately reminded her of a pillar of the Lawndale establishment, the firm of Grace, Sloane, and Page, and she tactfully enquired about a connection.

'Well, that's my Dad', Tom said slowly, 'so I guess …'

Jake interrupted with a crass joke about insider trading. After one excruciating moment he did at least recognise his gaffe and made some ridiculous excuse (something about his own vocal cords) for leaving the room just as Sonny came down the stairs.

Helen lost the will to try to find out anything more about Tom before the two boys went out.

* * *

><p>'Sorry about that', said Sonny to Tom, as they walked to Tom's car. 'They've been acting a little strange ever since, oh …'<p>

'Ever since their son started dating a boy? It can take a little getting used to.'

Sonny took a quick backward glance over his shoulder at the house. 'Actually, sexuality has turned out to be a complete non-issue', he said. 'It must be those 1960s counterculture ideals … or something. What I was going to say is that they've been acting a little strange ever since—I can remember. I suppose that might be some hangover from the 1960s, too. Look, never mind that. Any thoughts for the evening?'

Tom leaned over to give Sonny a quick kiss. 'Pizza?'

'Okay.' Sonny never turned down pizza if he could help it. It had used to be something he had in common with Jane …

* * *

><p>Approaching the pizzeria, Sonny and Tom encountered Kevin and Brittany. Brittany smiled sunnily and extended a cheery greeting to Sonny, who returned it cautiously.<p>

'Hey, Sonny', Kevin said, 'I didn't know you had a brother.'

Sonny took a quick glance at Tom before replying.

'You know what, Kevin? I've got some bad news for you. You remember that time you thought I was interested in Brittany, when we had that lab project for Ms Barch, and you beat me up for it to teach me to stay away from her? It turns out that was all a complete waste of your time, because I'm only interested in boys.'

Sonny wasn't expecting Kevin to start bullying him because he was gay—the Kevins of this world could always find a reason to bully him, anyway, not that he would have hidden in the closet (now that he knew the truth) to avoid a beating if that had been the issue. He'd survived a beating from Kevin once before. What took him by surprise was that he had failed to plumb the full depths of Kevin's stupidity.

'So … you're interested in your own brother?' Kevin gave Sonny what he probably thought was a shrewd look. 'Isn't that, like, insectivorous or something?'

Meanwhile, another aspect of Sonny's announcement had caught Brittany's attention. 'Kevin Thompson, did you beat Sonny up?'

'But babe!' Kevin protested. 'He was messing with my girlfriend!'

'You big bully! He was not messing with me, he was helping me with a school project, and we got a B minus! which is more than I ever got on any project I did with you! Oooh, you …, you …, you—Kevin Thompson, we are through!' Brittany turned and stormed away, with Kevin in plaintive pursuit.

Tom cleared his throat. 'Who said live theatre was dead?'

'Yeah', said Sonny, 'quite a show, wasn't it? But I don't think I have the energy left for an encore.' He gestured at the door of the pizzeria. 'I don't think I'm up to spending the whole evening in there explaining to people that our relationship is only homosexual, not incestuous. Not that it wasn't fun messing with Kevin's head, but after the thirteenth time it might get old.'

'Okay. I understand. I know, let's bag the pizza place and go to my parents' club.'

Sonny gave Tom the hairy eyeball. 'You're not much for crafty strategising, are you?' But Tom's reply showed Sonny that he'd been withholding credit unfairly.

'Nobody knows you there. You can tell me the back story of that little performance we just had, which sounds worth hearing, instead of having everybody else fishing for explanations. Besides, they charge my folks for meals whether they eat them or not, so we might as well get their money's worth.'

Sonny still hesitated. 'Tom, as much as I'd like to help your family in their time of need …' He trailed off as the Fashion Club came walking past and one by one gave Tom an appraising look as they filed by him.

'Do they have cheddar fries?' Sonny said.

* * *

><p>Being in the old-money establishment environment of the Winged Tree Country Club's dining room might mean there was nobody of Sonny's acquaintance fishing for explanations, but it also meant the presence of people Tom knew, specifically his parents and his sister Elsie. Sonny had just finished giving Tom the story of Kevin, Brittany, himself, and Ms Barch's project (fitting some more pieces into the larger background of the story of his life he had given Tom some time before), when the Sloanes came up to their table, and formal introductions and greetings followed. (Tom had told Sonny some time before that his parents had officially accepted his dating boys as well as girls. He suspected that they would prefer to believe that it was just an adolescent phase, but the best child psychiatrist in the State was an old family friend and frequent dinner guest at the Sloanes', and the Sloane parents had evidently adopted the view that, phase or no, acceptance was their best strategy. Elsie just enjoyed the opportunity to exploit it for facetious effect. She'd told Tom that if one of his ex-boyfriends ever married one of his ex-girlfriends, he'd make the ideal best man.)<p>

'I just spoke with Aunt Mildred', Tom's mother informed him. 'She's made a lot of improvements on the house.'

Elsie offered a different perspective. 'She had the screen door fixed.'

'We always spend August at the cove with my great-aunt Mildred', Tom explained to Sonny. 'It's a kind of tradition.'

Elsie provided more colour commentary. 'In other words, we don't have a choice.'

Elsie's mother was cross with her, but Sonny was starting to think Elsie and he might not be totally at odds. Mr Sloane changed the subject to Sonny's summer plans. He was obviously trying to make things less awkward—how was he to know? As Sonny hesitated, Tom made a helpful intervention.

'Actually, Sonny's just going to relax. He's earned it—he made high honour roll all three trimesters.'

Unfortunately, Tom's mother chose to seize on that last incidental reference. She was puzzled because Tom's private prep school, Fielding, didn't have trimesters. Sonny had to explain. He was used to putting people off, in all sorts of ways—even solely by turning out to be a boy—but he'd never before done it just by being a public school student. Mrs Sloane was nonplussed.

'Oh', she said. After a moment, breeding told. 'Well, high honour roll is an achievement at any school.'

'Actually', Sonny said, 'at ours it just means you managed to stay out of prison all year.'

After an awful moment's pause Elsie gave more evidence that she and Sonny were on similar, if not identical, wavelengths, by bursting into laughter. Her parents joined in. Tom seemed to be relieved; Sonny, not so much. He didn't feel much better later, either, when they were sitting in Tom's car outside the Morgendorffer house and Tom was apologising for the family onslaught. Tom made light of the fact that he had not previously told his family about Sonny, but Sonny wasn't sure it felt like a light matter.

'I never tell them about anybody I'm dating, Sonny. Boy _or_ girl.'

'Now I _really _feel special.'

'Well, you should. Because I like you.'

Sonny thanked him, because it seemed the thing to do, but by this point all he wanted to do was get out of the car. He had the door open before Tom could ask him to wait.

'I want to ask you … do you, you know … feel the same way about me?'

To himself, Sonny's affirmative response felt deeply unconvincing, but he detected no sign that Tom had the same reaction. Sonny said goodbye and got out of the car as quickly as he could, before anything else could happen.

He took one quick glance over his shoulder from the doorway. Tom's car … outside his house … he shook himself and went inside before Tom noticed.

* * *

><p>Helen had become used to her son saying that he 'didn't date'. It wasn't the most important thing. He needed to make more contact with the outside world: once he'd done that, she'd always felt, he'd be better prepared to go further and actually date somebody, and there was still time for that.<p>

So although it was a relief to find that there was a specific reason why he hadn't been interested in dating, which perhaps partly explained his almost relentlessly isolationist attitude, it didn't at all change her view that he needed more outlets. She hadn't changed that view when he had almost miraculously developed his friendship with Jane Lane. She knew it was an important friendship, and she was glad for Sonny, but it seemed to reinforce his isolationism more than not. It wasn't a good sign that Sonny's involvement with Tom had disrupted it, either. He couldn't rely on connecting with just one person.

And he certainly shouldn't be spending the whole of the school vacation sleeping in until one in the afternoon every day, and not emerging from his seclusion until the evening.

So when Sonny's teacher Timothy O'Neill rang the house looking for counsellors for his summer day camp, she had no hesitation giving him Sonny's name, despite her general reservations about the man. He hesitated. Of course he'd rather have had Quinn. Pretty much everybody would rather have Quinn than Sonny. Helen, knowing both of them intimately and feeling parental responsibility for the way they turned out, did not herself share the feeling, but she understood it. But she had already decided that since Quinn had unexpectedly suggested the idea of a tutor, she was not going to let anything else get in the way of that.

If O'Neill couldn't get Quinn, she suspected, he would still rather not have Sonny. Sonny was probably right about the connection between him and that Barch woman, with her vendetta against Sonny. But, more importantly, he lacked the firmness to disagree with anybody. Since the recent revelation about Sonny's sexuality, he would probably be anxious about confrontations with bigoted parents. So she turned his weakness to her advantage by implicitly threatening a confrontation about homophobia, and when she added the subtle hint of a possible anti-discrimination lawsuit, he caved in. Sonny, she knew, would be the one to put up more resistance.

She finally caught him when he came downstairs that evening and headed hastily for the front door. Of course he knew at once that she was waiting for him with intentions that he would find unpleasant—she'd expected him to be ready for that—and tried to fob her off with some ridiculous remark about a secret mission so that he could make his escape. But she held firm as she gave him what he no doubt thought of as the bad news. She didn't leave it open for discussion. He wasn't going to spend the whole summer locked up in his room, and that was that.

He protested flatly about being instead locked up with that man O'Neill and 'a busload of whiny kids', but thanks to long acquaintance she could read his voice and manner well enough to tell that the protest was only being lodged for the record and that he had given up hope of avoiding his fate. Still, he could stand a reminder about the issue.

'Sonny', she said, 'you need to be more tolerant. You know what they say. "Judge and be judged." '

'And I judge myself unfit for human contact.'

'That's exactly what you will be if you don't start engaging with the rest of us. You keep hiding your real face behind that anti-social mask and one day the mask will be your face. I'm not letting that happen. You're working at that camp.'

As she left the room she heard behind her his flat-voiced protest continue: 'What about my feelings? What about my rights?' and then, as she shut the door, 'What about my bribe?'

_No bribe this time, Sonny, _she thought. _I'm not paying you to grow up. Despite everything, I think you're finally ready to do it for your own sake._

It wasn't exactly the best feeling she'd ever had. But they'd both made their beds, and now they both had to lie in them.

* * *

><p>On the bus to Mr O'Neill's 'Okay to Cry Corral' (Sonny's teeth stung every time he thought of the name), Sonny would have thought that Mr DeMartino wanted to be there even less than he did. He just wasn't sure that was possible. Maybe DeMartino was less skilled at concealing it. That thought, as well as the children surrounding him, reminded Sonny of his own experiences of elementary and middle schools. He had acute memories even without the extensive notes he still kept on file.<p>

O'Neill was leading his little victims in a bowdlerised version of 'This Old Man': 'With a nick-nack, gentle pat, give the dog a bone, This young person helps out at home.' When he tried to get the 'counsellors' (Sonny and DeMartino) to sing a verse with him, he received a barren response.

The omens were no better when they arrived at the 'corral' (surely the appropriateness of the word was inadvertent on O'Neill's part). 'Uncle Timothy' (as he depressingly described himself—who'd want that in their family tree) introduced himself, and his plans for a journey together to a land of self-discovery where it was okay to laugh and okay to cry. Sonny wondered whether 'Uncle Timothy' would think it 'okay to cry' for somebody getting beaten up by a juvenile goon a head taller.

All _he _knew was that it never _helped_, which was why he wasn't crying at what he heard O'Neill say—not even when he invited Sonny and 'Uncle Anthony' to say a few words about their goals.

'My goal', Sonny said, 'is to avoid serious injury. I already know what it's like to get beaten up by a middle-school bully, so the experience would lack the charm of novelty.' He turned to DeMartino to signal him to have his say.

'I'm hoping to rediscover the _joys_ and _satisfactions_ of _teaching_, and the motives that led me to pursue such a _thankless_ … I mean, _rewarding_ profession in the first place. At least that's what my doctor says I need to do before I incur a cerebral _haemorrhage_!'

O'Neill assumed his accustomed posture for 'taken aback' and chuckled nervously. He explained that he'd been referring to goals for the campers.

DeMartino pulled out an index card and read from it. 'To help make this a _pleasurable_ experience for all. Let's learn to love ourselves together.'

Sonny said, 'I don't want any of the campers to get beaten up either.'

After a slight pause, O'Neill chuckled nervously again, and then divided them all into groups. Sonny went up to the table where his group was sitting and asked them whether they had anything to say before getting started. Some of them asked him personal questions about his appearance and demeanour—another experience without the charm of novelty. Instead of answering, he singled out a boy at the end who had folded his arms on the table and then buried his head in them—possibly some sort of kindred spirit.

'Um, how about you? Would you like to say anything?'

The boy raised his head, black-haired and bespectacled, as if the hinge in his neck needed oiling. When he spoke, his voice gave a similar impression.

'Is it fall yet?'

* * *

><p>Jane's first introduction to the art colony had not been comfortable. She seemed to be the youngest person there—probably the only high-schooler there—and she had a feeling that the people she had met didn't take her seriously as a result. Or perhaps, although it wasn't what she wanted to be true, they were a bunch of posers who didn't take her seriously because she didn't know how to pose. She couldn't help wishing she could hear what Sonny would have said about them, although she pushed the thought away.<p>

It didn't help that people seemed to be genuine about admiring Daniel Dotson, the guest artist and—as far as Jane could see—poser-in-chief. They even laughed at his jokes as he lectured them about a pathetic piece of conceptual art he had produced. When he asked them rhetorically about the thoughts that lay behind it, she couldn't stop herself from muttering some words to put in his mouth: 'I can't believe I'm getting away with this'. When somebody else in the audience (Paris, one of the women sharing Jane's cabin) responded to Dotson by shamelessly kissing up, calling him 'the greatest living artist of our time', Jane muttered another wisecrack about the lack of taste the woman was exhibiting. Sonny wasn't there to appreciate, but the young woman sitting next to Jane, who looked a little like Bif Naked, threw her a conspiratorial smirk. When another admirer asked Dotson where he got his inspiration, Jane's neighbour muttered, 'My alimony bills'. She and Jane shared a look of mutual understanding. They frowned in unison at the man's own response to the question about inspiration, a response which needed no comment beyond his own supposed-to-be-mock-modest conclusion: 'that's enough of the old windbag's ramblings for today'. Then, as the group broke up, the two of them exchanged introductions and Alison (that was her name) said, 'Our Mr. Dotson's really something, isn't he?'

'Well', said Jane, 'he certainly doesn't let substance get in the way of self-congratulatory yap.'

'At least we'll never have to worry about him intimidating us with his talent.'

Jane smiled, just a little, but for the first time since her arrival.

* * *

><p>Tom said to Sonny, 'Maybe you should get some of that for the little campers.' They were at the Sloane house watching a story on <em>Sick, Sad World <em>about rats on Ritalin.

Sonny gave the suggestion the consideration it deserved. 'Ritalin, or the rats?' he said.

Further discussion was forestalled by the arrival of Tom's mother and sister. Elsie was carrying a garment bag which, according to what her mother said, contained a dress specially made for her by somebody she referred to only as 'Richard' for something uninvitingly called 'the Starry Night Ball'.

Mrs Sloane wanted Sonny to 'change his mind' about going, so that they could 'gang up and convince Tom'. Obviously she thought Sonny had turned down an invitation, but she'd never personally extended one to him, which could only mean that she thought it had been passed on through Tom. But it hadn't, so what should Sonny say? Just a beat too late to save Sonny from feeling as if he'd made himself look like a complete idiot, Tom apologised for forgetting to tell him about the event, a benefit for the Lawndale Art Museum. His mother described it as 'a lot of fun'. Sonny felt compelled to make some sort of response.

'Um', he said, for the third time since Mrs Sloane's arrival, and continued limply, 'sounds like it.'

'If you like watching ice sculptures melt', Elsie said. Sonny was almost starting to like her.

Tom explained that he'd turned down the invitation because these events were always 'excruciatingly dull and stuffy'. He was probably right, but Sonny wished Tom actually had mentioned it to him in advance instead of just saying he had. It might have saved him from saying 'um' a fourth time.

In the Morgendorffer household, Sonny could often count on his sister to distract attention from him to herself when things were getting awkward. In the Sloane household, Elsie and Tom sniped at each other more directly and more reciprocally, with accusations about 'quasi-rebelliousness' (Tom's, so Elsie said) and 'faux jadedness' (Elsie's, so Tom said). It made for an interesting change of pace—until their mother cut them off and told Sonny that she could invite his parents as well, 'if you think they'd be interested'.

What could Sonny say? 'Um … thanks.' Five—far and away a personal best.

Somebody was having a good time, though. Elsie took the opportunity to remind Tom of 'fireworks at the club'. Tom excused himself again and lied, 'I already told … _promised _Sonny I'd go with him to his friend's Fourth of July party.'

(The part about the friend, at least, was not intentionally false. Tom didn't know that Jodie Landon, being Jodie, would have invited everybody, friend or no.)

'Sonny', Mrs Sloane said, 'what can we do to get into your good graces?'

Sonny knew that 'Put me out of my suffering now' would not be a suitable response.

* * *

><p>Another place where Sonny wanted to be put out of his suffering was the 'Okay To Cry Corral', but there the feeling was shared by everybody else bar one. O'Neill resisted the campers' clamour to swim in the lake, not <em>despite <em>the heat, but _because of _it, on the grounds of risking exposure to algal blooms. He insisted that they continued working on the construction of a craft project, encouraging them to attach sappy symbolic significance to the differently coloured lanyards.

A tragically ensnared DeMartino haplessly tried to follow O'Neill's example, but the only significant things he could think of to symbolise were failure, indignities, and frustration.

Sonny said, 'So continue threading the blue with the green until you've finished', adding, with a frankness born of indifference, 'or can't take the tedium any more.' Then he picked up his book and left them to it. Surprisingly, Link—the boy with the glasses, the one waiting for fall—was the first to get up and come over to him.

'Hey, Link', he said, 'need some help?'

'Nope. All done.' The boy dumped his finished product on the table in front of Sonny and slouched away. The thing looked like a rats' nest.

* * *

><p>'It's been a lovely evening', Sonny lied to Tom, 'but I think I'm ready to go home now.' It wasn't that he minded being with Tom—it was all the other people at the Landons' Fourth of July party, and here came Brittany Taylor manoeuvring through the crowd towards them to prove it. Sonny hadn't seen her—naturally enough, and thank goodness—since she'd flounced away, with Kevin Thompson in her wake, after the encounter outside the pizzeria. Back view then, front view now—Sonny could still understand what other boys saw in her, but there was something psychologically positive about having an explanation and a justification for his own indifference. He was indifferent, also, to the discovery that Brittany seemed unaffected by the revelation of his sexuality.<p>

'Hi, Sonny! Hi, Tom! It is Tom, right?' Brittany was unaccompanied, by Kevin or any substitute male, but her spirits seemed unlowered. Sonny had figured that her break-up with the quarterback would be as ephemeral as all their other break-ups, and the first words to bubble out of her after they returned her greetings tended to confirm it.

'Sonny, I've talked to Kevvy, and he's promised never to beat you up again, and to stop all the other boys on the football team as well, and he's going to apologise to you when he sees you again.'

'Please don't make him apologise. That would just be too much for me', said Sonny with perfect truth.

'Oh!' Brittany's eyebrows went up and her smile decreased in intensity for a moment before bouncing back, along with another part of her anatomy. After a moment to integrate the new information about Sonny's attitude, she decided that if Sonny didn't want an apology, it didn't matter if Kevin didn't give him one, particularly as she had already told Sonny that Kevin was sorry. Then she fidgeted as if anxious about something else she wanted to say.

Sonny saw no reason to give her any help.

Tom said, 'I don't think we've actually met before, or at least not properly.'

Sonny remained impassive. 'Brittany, Tom Sloane. Tom, Brittany Taylor.'

Brittany twirled a ringlet of hair around a finger. 'Um … I know it's not really any of my business, but I was trying to explain to Kevin and I got kind of confused. You know when we met outside the pizza place and you said you were only interested in boys?'

Maybe she hadn't understood after all. That seemed unlikely. Hadn't even Kevin cottoned on? 'It's not a secret, Brittany, if that's what you're wondering.'

'No, it's just that … I mean, you and Jane are always around together, so I wasn't sure …'

Sonny braced himself. 'When I said I was only interested in boys, what I meant was that I'm only attracted to boys, that I'm only interested in boys as people to date. I never did date girls. Jane and I were best friends, we were never dating. Jane's an interesting person, but I was never interested in dating her. Some people are only interested in dating girls, like … Kevin'—as Sonny said this, another example occurred to him—'or like Upchuck. And some people are only interested in dating boys, like me. Or like you, I suppose.'

Brittany shook her head. 'No—I mean, I thought I understood that part already. But … you said that to us when Kevin thought you two were brothers?' Her voice rose slightly in pitch as she twirled another ringlet around a finger on the other hand. 'So it sounded like you were hinting …'

'Yes', said Sonny, and looked at Tom.

'Yes', said Tom, 'we're dating.'

Brittany looked at Tom. 'But … I used to see you around with Jane, so I thought …' Brittany paused and wrinkled her forehead.

Tom nodded. 'That we were dating. You were right. Jane was my girlfriend. You see, Brittany, some people are only attracted to boys, and some people are only attracted to girls, but some of the people I find attractive are boys and some are girls. Is that the part you didn't understand?'

'Yes!' said Brittany, jiggling with relief. 'Only … does that mean that now you're dating Jane _and _Sonny?'

Tom sighed. 'No. Sometimes I date girls and sometimes I date boys, but I only date one person at a time. I was dating Jane before, but now we've broken up, and I'm just dating Sonny.'

'Oh!' Brittany performed another even more intricate ringlet twirl. 'Well, I hope Jane isn't too upset. If I broke up with Kevvy, or somebody, and then one of my best friends started dating him straight away, I'd be upset. I mean, I know you're a brain, Sonny, but sometimes we're all just human, or whatever.'

_Credit where credit is due_, Sonny thought, and said without affect, 'Brittany, you've really been thinking about this, haven't you? I guess now we have to think about it. Excuse us.' He took Tom by the arm and drew him away.

Before either of them could say anything more, they ran into their host (Jodie), just come down the stairs. She thanked Sonny for coming to her party and then turned to Tom and said, 'Tom Sloane, right? Jane's boyfriend?'

'Actually', Tom said with a fleeting glance at Sonny, 'we're just friends now.' Sonny exhibited no reaction to this economical use of the truth. Jodie, meanwhile, expressed disappointment at the news and hope for a reconciliation.

Tom moved an arm awkwardly and looked at Sonny, who plunged unhesitatingly into an explanation with computer-like exactitude. He wasn't naïve enough to expect Jodie to be free of all forms of bigotry just because she was herself a member of a discriminated-against minority: he expected Jodie not to be bigoted because she was Jodie. In fact, as he gave her the story, Jodie let just one smothered expression of surprise escape her and then bit her lip as if ashamed of the reflex. Before she could recover herself, her father approached them.

'Dad!' she said. 'You remember Sonny Morgendorffer. And this is Tom Sloane.'

Jodie's father had been giving Sonny a fishy look, but on hearing Tom's name his attention diverted.

'Sloane? You're not Angier's boy, are you?'

Tom did not attempt to deny it, and Mr Landon followed up by asking after his 'lovely mother'.

'You know my mother?' Tom said, which wouldn't have been Sonny's reflexive reaction to somebody who described Helen Morgendorffer as 'lovely'. But Andrew Landon made it clear (unconsciously) that his interest in Katherine Sloane was a result of her power, as a board member, over the Landons' membership application at the country club. Tom didn't seem _entirely _comfortable with the man's fawning effusiveness, but maybe he was used to things like that as part of his world—he didn't seem as displeased as Sonny, or as poor Jodie, who had been saved from one possible awkwardness by her father's arrival only to be plunged into another. It wasn't her fault. She wasn't the one trying to get into a country club.

* * *

><p>Alison had persuaded Jane, against Jane's better judgement, to leave her room for one meal so that she could mingle with her 'fellow artists'. Alison insisted that they'd warm up to Jane if given a chance.<p>

Jane inquired whether they were conversing across parallel dimensions.

Alison said, 'I'll bet you dinner I'm right.'

'You're on, sucker.'

Alison took Jane to a table with Paris, another woman from Jane's cabin called Jet, and a man Jane didn't recognise. The others made no objection when Alison and Jane sat down with them. Alison asked them for their opinion of the colony.

Jet found it 'freeing'.

Paris praised Daniel Dotson for his brilliance in describing one of her works as 'a stroke of inspiration'.

The man at the table took the opportunity to make an unnecessary remark about the other kinds of strokes Paris and Dotson had explored together, and capped it by saying, 'Oh, well, I suppose genius does have its prerogatives.

Jane expressed a moderate scepticism about the applicability of the term 'genius' to Daniel Dotson.

'No offence, Jane', lied Paris, 'but aren't you still in high school? How much can you know about art at this point?'

'Excuse me?' said Jane, and thought of Sonny.

Alison rose to Jane's defence, pointing out that she'd been accepted to the program on the basis of a portfolio of work just like everybody else. Paris apologised more or less graciously, but then she gathered up her tablemates to make their farewells and leave.

'Gee, that was fun. But in the future', Jane said to Alison, 'let's save time and just roll around on gravel.'

'Sorry about that. I guess I owe you one.'

What guessing? 'You owe me dinner.'

* * *

><p>If Sonny had been a nicer person, he would have gone to the trouble of getting a second pair of ear defenders for Mr DeMartino. His own pair worked perfectly, so he had no idea what songs O'Neill was now leading on the bus, but he could see from DeMartino's expression that they weren't getting any less horrifying.<p>

Things weren't getting any less horrifying when they got to the corral, either, where the cattle were developing more signs of cabin fever. Swimming already vetoed on account of algal blooms, now hiking was added to the proscribed list on account of poison ivy and ticks in the woods. There was no sign of such prospects scaring the children, but of course that made no difference to O'Neill.

(Sonny himself had no fond memories of outdoor activities from Camp Grizzly, but then, he had no fond memories of indoor activities from Camp Grizzly either.)

Reluctantly, the children continued the painting assignment they'd been given as a means of exploring the 'child within'. Only in the strange convolutions of the mind of 'Uncle Timothy' could it make sense to speak of a 'child within' when the subject actually was a child.

DeMartino had stopped to examine the work of Josh, whom Sonny had marked down at first sight as an ugly customer. He'd known more than enough Joshes over the years—of course with that type, as far as Sonny was concerned, one was more than enough. In answer to DeMartino's question, Josh explained that he'd painted a football player because football players, everybody knew, were winners.

'I see', said DeMartino, his inflamed eyeball doing a rumba. 'Obviously, your definition of a winner is a degenerate _slacker_ with pigskin for _brains_, an _unshakable_ desire to _sleep_ through class, and a lifetime goal of excelling at _arm noise_ contests while _never, ever_ doing any honest work of _any kind_! Is that _right_?'

For once the truth of a hoary chestnut was seen: DeMartino stood up to the bully and the bully ran away. In tears, no less. Of course, that was no evidence the same technique would have been effective if employed by somebody the size Josh would choose to pick on.

O'Neill and DeMartino lacked the insight to realise this was the best thing that could have happened to Josh, and initially both were alarmed.

'I'm no _good_ at working with young people!' DeMartino said. 'Why, oh, _why_ did I ever think I could?'

The children, unlike the adults, were well aware of who was the worst bully at camp, and spontaneously began cheering for 'Uncle Anthony', who was so overwhelmed he could barely thank them.

Although Sonny had been interested to observe all this from the corner of his eye, he was still more concerned with Link, whose 'child within' had painted a dark figure crouched in the rain by a leafless tree. It was good art, though. It reminded him of Jane. Maybe she would have known what to say to Link.

Sonny kept brooding intermittently about Link for the rest of the day. That evening in his room his thoughts had him repeatedly looking up from his book and losing his place, so the phone call from Tom was no real interruption. But Sonny still wasn't in the mood to see him. He couldn't even be bothered coming up with a new excuse instead of continuing the pretence that he had a cold.

Tom offered to come round with soup and goldfish crackers, 'or real goldfish, if you prefer', but Sonny turned him down.

Tom dropped the light tone of voice. He was worried that things were not right with Sonny, especially as the Sloanes would be leaving for 'the cove' in a week, and wouldn't be back for a month.

'I know', Sonny said. 'Um', he said again, 'a month's not that long.'

Tom gracefully let it go. 'All right. Call me if you feel like getting out, okay?'

'Sure', said Sonny, and they hung up. But 'sure' was the last thing he was. About anything.

Although Sonny wasn't sure what to do about Link, O'Neill was. Sure but, inevitably, wrong. He had noticed, unsurprisingly, that Link wasn't enjoying himself, and had fixed on a course of action: have a one-to-one chat with Link and make things worse. Sonny didn't believe anybody could feel better after a one-to-one chat with 'Uncle Timothy'. Not even Ms Barch? No, not even Barch. They probably didn't spend their time together chatting. He shuddered.

He still wasn't sure what to do about the situation when Link came out of O'Neill's office making headlong for the exit from the corral, but he headed to intercept him anyway, leaving his other charges to keep up the 'good work'. 'Hey', he said, feeling almost as ineffectual as O'Neill, 'everything okay?'

At least he got a reaction. Link was still steaming. Perhaps he'd even told O'Neill off, not that that ever did any good.

'How can you stand this place?'

Sonny processed the question rapidly. 'I didn't know I did.'

Link gave the smart remark no response but a contemptuous stare.

Sonny said, 'I'm here under duress as much as you. I may be a guard instead of a prisoner, but I can't cut short your sentence—or my own. All I can do is give you a pass out on compassionate grounds. Want to go for a walk?'

'Outside? That would be _dangerous_.'

'Not as dangerous as keeping you in the same building as "Uncle Timothy" any longer without a break. A one-to-one chat with him is grounds for a compassionate pass for anybody. And I'll be with you. But there'll be no more talking. We'll go for two completely separate silent solitary walks, only in the same place.'

He opened the door and cocked his head at Link, who silently accepted his offer by walking out and looking back for Sonny to follow him.

Despite this sign of possible progress, Sonny still felt unsettled about the whole Link situation, although when they returned from their walk 'Uncle Timothy' gave them a highly anxious look (which was just _gorgeous_). And Sonny still felt unsettled about Tom and his family, as he was reminded by another phone call at home from Tom's mother, inviting the Morgendorffers directly to the 'Starry Night Ball'. Sonny's parents reacted positively—until they found out it would cost them a thousand dollars and had to invent an excuse. Sonny's mother worried that now the Sloanes would think them cheap.

'Who cares what they think?' Sonny said.

His mother was taken aback by the force of his reaction.

Sonny stood up. 'It's bad enough the rest of the town grovels at the Sloanes' feet. Now I have to put up with it in my own home?' he said, and walked out.

* * *

><p>Alison had settled her bet with Jane without quibble, and after the dinner she'd bought for the two of them they'd gone back to Alison's cabin to look at some of her art. Jane could see it was good, too, no matter what the galleries thought.<p>

They were having a good enough time that when Jane wanted to call it a night Alison pressed her to stay. But Jane was exhausted and started to leave.

Alison took Jane's arm and held her back. She suggested that given the amount of wine Jane had drunk she really ought to lie down.

'No, really, I'm fine', Jane said, and she really was—until Alison put her other arm around her and said, 'I promise not to kick you out of bed in the morning. Well, unless you're snoring.'

Jane violently shrugged off Alison's arms and stepped back. 'Oh, what now!' she said. 'Am I jinxed or something?'

Alison was taken aback by the force of this reaction, and Jane felt a little embarrassed. Up till now Alison had been nothing but nice to her, and it wasn't fair to get angry for what could be no more than an honest mistake, still less for events in Jane's past that Alison had nothing to do with. She tried to get her cool back and keep it, but she also stood her ground. The problem was the calm conviction with which Alison carried on as if she knew more about Jane's sexuality than Jane herself did. This might be the first time that Jane herself had been propositioned by somebody of the same sex, but it wasn't exactly the first time she'd had to deal with the whole issue personally. But the more Jane insisted that she knew she was exclusively heterosexual, the more Alison challenged her. She seemed to think it meant something that Jane had let a bisexual buy her dinner and then gone back to her bedroom with her.

'I didn't know you were bi', Jane said. 'And the dinner thing was settling a bet.'

'Sure … settling a bet. I'm sorry, baby, but I never hit on straight chicks.'

It was the 'baby' that did it.

'Right', said Jane, 'I'm a baby. I don't have the experience to know myself. Do you want to hear about my experience? Do you want to hear how I know myself? I've dated a bisexual. I've been dating one all year. A bisexual _guy_, because I'm only interested in guys, because he may be bi but I'm straight. And you know how we broke up? He went behind my back with my best friend. My best friend who's also a guy. Because it turns out my guy best friend is gay, and he didn't even know it, but _I _guessed a year before he did! I didn't say anything to him, though, because I figured it wasn't up to me to lay down the law to somebody else about what his sexual identity was, no matter how well I knew him! So, what do you think now? Do you think I have enough experience of gay vibes to know what I'm talking about when I tell you I'm straight?'

Alison took a step back and raised her palms towards Jane. 'I'm sorry', she said, looking into Jane's eyes, and then dropped her gaze.

'Yeah, well, you should be. And maybe some other people should be as well.' Jane shut the door firmly behind her and started jogging back towards her own cabin, her fists carving the air and her feet gouging the ground.

* * *

><p>O'Neill had everybody sitting in a circle so that he could ask them to hold hands and visualise 'trust'. The children still wanted to go outside, and when O'Neill wouldn't consider it, they appealed to 'Uncle Anthony' to intervene. He made a valiant effort, but with no greater success than theirs. At that precise moment, an alarm beeped to remind O'Neill to take his echinacea. As he left the room for it, he again asked them to hold hands.<p>

When DeMartino followed this instruction, his hands acquired from his neighbours' a coating of peanut butter. The dam burst. Ranting in fury, he rose to his full height, grasped the nearest heavy object—which happened to be a washbasin—ripped it free, and hurled it through a large plate-glass window. 'I'm going on a hike!' he shouted, and climbed to freedom, followed by an eager procession of cheering campers.

Only Link was left behind with Sonny.

'Come on', Sonny said to him. 'Even _I'll _admit that was mildly amusing.'

'Whatever.'

Sonny looked at Link and remembered when he was about the same age.

'Sixth grade was the worst year for me', he said. 'I remember one week when I got beaten up eleven times. That's only talking about the actual physical violence, though. There's also hiding my glasses or my backpack, breaking my things or just stealing them, spoiling my food, tying my shoelaces together, phoney messages from teachers about errands to run and other tricks like that … add it all together and third grade was the worst year. It got less every year after that. And the actual beatings got fewer every year after sixth grade. In fact, the last time was nine months ago, which still pretty much amazes me.'

'And now your life is one big bowl of cherries.'

'No, it still pretty much sucks a lot of the time. But school pretty much sucks for everybody.'

Link pulled a face. 'And did your mother throw your father out for being a jerk and then marry an even bigger jerk? And do your parents pay other people to deal with you because they're too busy "listening to their souls"?'

'No', Sonny said. 'My parents are still together, which I suppose I should be grateful for. Although if they did split up, maybe I'd get to live with one of them and my sister would go with the other. Do you have a sister who's the most popular girl in the school and doesn't want anybody to know you're related because it might harm her status?'

Link shook his head.

'Did you ever get beaten up eleven times in one week?'

Link made no response. Then he pointed and said, 'What's the book you're reading?'

Sonny picked it up and held it out to Link. '_Metamorphosis_, by Franz Kafka. You might like Kafka. What sort of things do you read?'

At that precise moment, O'Neill came back into the room. 'Oh!' he said. 'A little one-on-one session! That's … uh … of course it's good to "rap", right? But … not that I want to suggest anything in any way improper, or disrespect anybody's rights, but'—and here he paused again and laughed nervously—'maybe, Sonny, we should be thinking how our behaviour might be seen and interpreted by other people, people who have their own perspective, which we have to respect, even if some might consider it not as broad-minded …'

Before O'Neill could ramble on any further, three strangers came into the room, strangers impressive for their formal attire and severe demeanour, which immediately discouraged continuation of previous conversations.

To O'Neill's complete and final discomposure, they were Federal agents come to arrest him.

When they'd completed the necessary legal routine, two of them took O'Neill outside. The third and apparently most senior lingered to address Sonny.

'Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior?' he said.

'Yes, but everybody calls me Sonny.'

'Well, Sonny, thanks again for your tip-off. We picked up the Barch woman this morning as well, and we think we've got all the evidence we need against both of them, but we'll be in touch to let you know. In the meantime, about this day camp—is there a responsible adult to take charge?'

'There's _an _adult', Sonny said. 'Mr Anthony DeMartino, he's a history teacher at Lawndale High. He took all the other kids out on a hike just before you got here.'

'That's good to know. I was ready to make any necessary arrangements with appropriate agencies, but if I can rely on this Mr DeMartino, I can get back to more important things. Only … do you know when he'll be back? There are often regulations about supervisory ratios for children in situations like this.'

'I think I know somebody who'd be more than happy to come and take Mr O'Neill's place. If it would set your mind at rest, would you like to wait just a few minutes while I make a phone call?'

The agent followed Sonny into the office and waited while he located the correct number and made the call.

'Ms Onepu?' Sonny paused for a moment to listen. 'Ms Onepu, this is Sonny Morgendorffer. There's a Federal agent here who'd like to talk to you about the welfare of some children.' He handed the receiver to the man.

As the telephone conversation continued—Sonny sensed Onepu's torrent of language was having a predictable effect on her interlocutor—Link got Sonny's attention, lowered his voice, and said, 'Did you just get "Uncle Timothy" _arrested_?'

'I think you can stop calling O'Neill "Uncle" in the circumstances. And you were here when he got arrested and saw for yourself', Sonny said flatly.

'And _they _said _you _tipped them off', Link hissed.

'All right', Sonny said. He looked round to make sure the Federal agent wasn't overhearing him. 'I bugged his phone. Can we please not talk about this? Don't make me beg, it would humiliate both of us.'

Link shook his head. 'Wow', was all he said.

The senior Federal agent, whose name Sonny had never got, finished his phone call at just that point, and made a welcome interruption.

'Your Ms Onepu will be here shortly. Is everything under control until then?'

Sonny nodded and the man silently shook his hand, returned his nod, and left. Sonny and Link went back out of the office into the activities room and sat down.

After a moment, Link asked Sonny to explain what O'Neill had been making such a fuss about just before they came to arrest him.

'Oh, that', Sonny said. 'He would have been worried about getting in trouble for letting me spend so much time alone with you. That's because of my being gay.'

Link leapt from his seat. '_What?_' His voice and his body quaked with emotion. 'You just stay away from me from now on! Just stay the hell away!'

* * *

><p>Thinking she'd found a friend and then finding she hadn't made things even worse for Jane than they were to begin with. Maybe Daniel Dotson was no worse than before because of her disappointment, but she felt it more. She could feel it coming out in her paintings.<p>

The colony was a small place, and inevitably she and Alison had to chance across each other again. They exchanged wary greetings.

'Look, I gotta be honest', Jane said. 'All that stuff I said to you … maybe you didn't deserve to be blamed for stuff you had nothing to do with.'

'Basically you were right, though', Alison said. 'I shouldn't have tried to tell you who you were. Maybe I was hoping a little too hard and saw something that wasn't there.'

'So you hit on a straight chick after all. I guess now you know what that's like.'

'First time for everything. Still want to be friends?'

Jane shrugged, and then nodded, but when Alison stepped forward to hug her, Jane stepped back. Alison dropped her arms and looked awkward.

Jane tried to change the subject by warning Alison of the approach of Daniel Dotson, who was just then coming towards them. but the way he and Alison spoke to each other made it look as if the meeting was expected, and the way he pinched her bottom before going to wait for her in his car sent an even clearer message.

Jane was incredulous, and reminded Alison of the damning things she'd said about Dotson before, but Alison only protested that all she was looking for was a little fun.

Jane suggested that the possibility of a few introductions to gallery owners might have been an additional attraction. She was starting to suspect how the art world really worked.

'God', said Alison, 'high school. It's all such a big deal with you guys. You take everything so seriously.' She walked away from Jane, this time for good.

Jane answered the empty air. 'Like people saying you give off gay vibes just because they're trying to get into your pants.'

* * *

><p>The campers at the 'Okay To Cry Corral' were happy about the way 'Uncle Anthony' ran it after the removal of 'Uncle Timothy' (missed by nobody). DeMartino had been elevated by what was, candidly, little short of adulation: he had rediscovered the hunger to enlighten which had first made him want to be a teacher. Onepu had exhibited some of her usual anxieties about risks to the children, which had gained her no friends, but she had quickly been won over by DeMartino's new-found confidence and the unmistakable delight of the campers. And Sonny was not in the least surprised by the steadfast way Link cold-shouldered him up to the very last day.<p>

He was also not in the least surprised at the continued friction between himself and Tom. Once his obligations at camp had been discharged he had given in to one of Tom's repeated invitations and agreed to go out with him the evening before he left for his month at 'the cove' with Aunt Mildred. When Tom arrived to pick Sonny up, Sonny mother renewed her high-energy grovelling, excusing herself and her husband for their inability to attend the thousand-dollar-a-ticket fund-raiser. When they'd got out of the door and were walking to the car, Tom tried to make light of it, but Sonny saw no reason to hold back his unhappiness about the situation. He personally didn't care that the Sloanes moved in circles the Morgendorffers could never afford, but it rankled him that his parents had to be so humiliatingly reminded of it.

It also rankled him that Tom was keeping him away from the Sloane family by not inviting him to events like the fund-raiser or the fireworks display at their club. Tom repeated his original explanation that he hated events like that himself and assumed Sonny would share his attitude. Sonny couldn't deny the force of this, but he thought Tom should have asked him just the same.

'You're right', said Tom, adroitly cutting Sonny's legs out from under him. Sonny still suspected that the real reason was that Tom expected his parents not to approve of Sonny, but Tom had an answer for that.

'If you mean, because you're a boy, then you're just going to have to accept what I told you before. This isn't the first time I've dated a boy. It isn't the first time my parents have known that I'm dating a boy. It's not even the first time my parents have known that I've dumped a girl in favour of a boy. If anything, they're probably happier about you than they were about Jane.'

Sonny stopped short before reaching the kerb. 'So now there's something wrong with Jane, is there?'

'I didn't say that! I know Jane's cool! I'm the one who dated her, if you remember.'

'Now you mean there's something wrong with me, not being attracted to her. I suppose you think it's a choice.'

Tom' s voice rose. 'Dammit, Sonny, I didn't say that, either! You could give me a chance to explain! All I meant was that Jane's family wouldn't care whether she went to graduate school or dropped out now! Look at Trent, for instance. Whereas my parents know that you're really smart and that you're sure to be heading for a top college, just like what they're planning for me.'

Sonny's voice dropped. 'Whereas the Lanes aren't up to Sloane snobbish standards.'

Tom's hands jerked out sideways with frustration. 'I can't win with you, can I? Will you just quit trying to pick a fight with me?'

'Excuse me?'

Tom made an effort to get his voice back under control. 'You're complaining about unrealistic standards, but what about yours? My mother fails them for giving your mother an invitation to something, but I fail them because I didn't. You imagine that my parents might not approve of you, solely because of that I explain why they do approve of you, and that makes us snobs.'

'I'm sorry if you don't like it when I'm loyal to Jane.'

'What I don't like is that you won't admit what's really bothering you, which is that actually caring about somebody might make you vulnerable.'

Sonny took a step backward. 'Maybe we aren't ready for this. Maybe we need to take a break.'

Tom shook his head. 'Maybe _we _aren't ready? How am I not ready? Not ready for what? Take a break from what? Come on, Sonny, what are you talking about?' He stared at Sonny, and Sonny tensed up as he waited for what came next. 'Well, I'm not going to stand here and beg for a response.' Tom walked to the driver's door, started to get into the car, and paused halfway to look at Sonny again. Sonny stood mute. 'Fine', Tom said, 'nice knowing you', and then sat down, hit the top of the steering wheel once with his left fist as he gripped it with his right hand, then reached out to shut the door, started up, and drove off.

When his tail lights had disappeared, Sonny unclenched. 'Yeah', he said, 'nice knowing you.'

He got back into the house and up to his room without his parents noticing. Then he lay on the bed arguing to himself that he'd done the right thing. He and Tom were from different worlds. It just couldn't work. _I mean_, he thought, _unless I tried or something._ He didn't feel good. _Sonny Morgendorffer is feeling low. And, in other news, doctors hold out little hope for improvement in Queen Anne's condition._

To his relief (_what? his what?_), Quinn interrupted him, entering the room without even knocking—and even that didn't provoke him into a cutting remark. Her excuse was that she was returning a book to him, but like most of her excuses it wasn't much good—the book didn't come from him but from her tutor. As if Quinn would ever forget which male had given her something, even if only as a temporary loan. So what was the real reason Quinn had come into his room? Why, to open up a conversation about that very same tutor. Not the most skilful manoeuvre, but not too bad for a tyro.

Why would Quinn think Sonny's opinion of the man was worth having, though? Sonny had only met him briefly. Anybody who was persevering with tutoring Quinn must have an unusual ability to tolerate pain, that was all Sonny could say.

Quinn wanted to know whether Sonny thought the tutor was 'cute'.

'Quinn, just because gay boys and straight girls are both interested in boys doesn't mean we're going to be interested in the same boys. My ideas of "cute" aren't necessarily going to be the same as yours.' Sonny stood up. 'Let's try to nip this in the bud. Look at the way I dress. Has it changed since I figured out that I'm gay? Have I adopted your ideas about the importance of appearance?'

Quinn seemed to be starting to get the point. Sonny went on to mention some of the other things, apart from appearance, that could contribute to a successful relationship, compatible qualities of character and personality.

Quinn interrupted. 'Like you and Tom.'

Sonny was irritated. He hadn't been talking about Tom, and he didn't want to talk about Tom. But Quinn insisted that they were a highly compatible couple.

'Quinn, this is what we've been talking about. Just because you and I are both attracted to boys doesn't mean we're attracted to the same ones or in the same way. Don't start telling me you know this stuff about me.'

'Gay or straight, Sonny, it's still dating, and that's been my major field of study for years.'

'Maybe', Sonny said. He scratched behind his ear. 'But you haven't met the Sloanes.'

'You can't judge people by their families. That would mean people could judge me by …' Quinn did a double-take. 'Got to go', she said, and left the room.

Sonny shook himself. He had to have somebody he could actually talk with. He picked up the phone and dialled.

As soon as Jane answered, he remembered how they'd parted and apologised for calling, but she sounded almost enthusiastic to hear him. Granted, enthusiasm came more naturally to her than to him, but still … He took the risk of asking her how things were going.

'Fine, fine, fine', she lied. 'Couldn't be better.'

'Sucks, huh?'

'Well, out of all the people here I did meet one who wasn't mind-numbingly pretentious, but she turned out to be a manipulative, opportunistic lech.'

The gender of the pronoun did not escape Sonny's attention. 'You're not kidding.'

'As much as I'd like to gain your sour perspective on the whole sordid incident, I don't think this is the way or the time to talk about it.'

'In that case, what if I did something like, oh, I don't know, dropped by for a friendly chat?'

'Look, I don't really feel like any visitors right now. It's nothing personal.'

Sonny took a deep breath. 'Not even a visitor who can give you the exclusive inside dope on how the Feds busted Mr O'Neill?'

There was a brief silence at the other end of the line before Jane answered. 'Okay, now you're the one who's not kidding.' She gave a brief snort of suppressed amusement before continuing. 'Trent was going to drop by on his way to a gig. Maybe you can hitch a ride. They can always use an extra person to push.'

It was not in Sonny's nature to punch the air in triumph.

Hanging out with Trent was okay, too (the rest of Mystik Spiral spent most of the trip dozing in the back of the Tank, which was probably just as well). Not so okay, perhaps, was the bit where Trent's pulling a chocolate bar out of his back pocket caused the Tank to start driving on both sides of the highway at once but even that was still a more relaxing experience than it might have sounded because he was sitting next to Trent. And Trent was the one person he could really talk to about what had been happening between himself and Jane, and the whole Tom thing. It hardly mattered that Trent had few actual words to contribute to the conversation.

'Hey, Janey knows you guys didn't mean to hurt her. She'll come around. Trust me.'

'Yeah. Thanks, Trent.'

Of course, just to remind Sonny of the limitations of human beings in general as company, Trent had to continue by starting to compose a lyric about betrayal. At first Sonny felt generous enough to help Trent out finding rhymes, but by the time they reached their destination he had been driven to the point where he told Trent that he wasn't helping.

Trent said, 'Oh.' Then he said, 'Sorry'. After another pause, 'Um, you know how it is', he continued. 'Inspiration.'

Another good thing about talking with Trent. Now Sonny was ready to talk with somebody else.

They left the rest of Mystik Spiral sleeping in the Tank and walked towards the cabin where Jane was staying. Trent gave Sonny some more reassurance. Apparently Jane had told him she thought Sonny and Tom made a good couple.

Sonny could not blame Trent for being unaware that he was saying that Quinn and Jane had been in agreement. He tried to banish that thought from his mind by telling Trent that he and Tom had broken up. Trent was surprised enough to ask about the reasons.

By this time they had reached the door of the cabin. As Trent knocked, Sonny fumbled for an answer to his question, and ended up by saying, 'Mainly I got weirded out by his family.'

'But you weren't dating _them_', said Trent.

Before Sonny's brain had to start dealing with agreement between Quinn and Trent, Jane opened the door. He was glad to see her.

The three of them exchanged greetings, then went inside. Jane showed them around the cabin and they chatted briefly. Then Trent excused himself to go and wake up his bandmates.

Sonny told Jane the whole O'Neill story. Jane told Sonny the whole Alison story. Sonny told Jane the whole Link story, mentioning how Link's art had reminded him of Jane. Jane showed Sonny some of her recent paintings.

'Some day the curators will look back on these and say they're from my "art colonies suck" period.'

'Yeah', said Sonny, 'this is the kind of stuff Link painted.'

'This Link situation is really bothering you.'

Sonny nodded. 'Unlikely as it sounds, I thought there was a moment where I might get through to him. He was impressed about the O'Neill bust. But I guess I can't expect it to make no difference to anybody.'

Jane shook her head. 'Yeah, I think it's always going to make a difference to _some _people. Look, why don't we go to the Mystik Spiral gig? The music will remind you that you already knew how ugly life can get.'

The venue, when they got there, had a similar effect. As they stood around chatting while they waited for the performance to begin, Sonny finally got around to telling Jane that he'd broken up with Tom.

Jane's response was to make it clear that Sonny shouldn't expect any sympathy from her, given the past history. From that point, their discussion entered into a labyrinth of conflicting interpretations of that past history. Sonny was never able afterwards to reconstruct in his head just what the sequence of utterances was, but they disagreed about who had hurt whose feelings when by doing what, and about which actions had had what significance, until his head was spinning.

'I'm confused', he said. 'What are we fighting about here?'

'We're fighting about you, Sonny Morgendorffer, being dumb enough to think a boyfriend is worth screwing up a really good friendship for. A really important friendship.'

Sonny wasn't sure that was what had happened, not exactly—but maybe it was. He _had _done the wrong thing to start with, he knew that, and he had hurt Jane by doing so, he'd never denied it, and everything that happened after that—well, maybe he had been as dumb as Jane said. He was the one who had risked screwing up a really good friendship over a boyfriend when Jane had started going out with Tom. He sure couldn't say he was an expert on what had happened. And supposing it possible he had been that dumb—and it was _possible_—well, then …

'I'm sorry if I did that.' It was the least he could say. Was it enough? 'Um', he continued, 'I really missed you this summer.'

'Well, I really missed you too', said Jane. What Sonny had said had been enough. 'And I'm sorry about what happened with Link. That really sucks.'

'I'm sorry about what happened with Alison. That really sucks, too.' _Especially_, Sonny thought, _on top of all that other stuff, _but he decided it would be wiser not to say so. What they needed at this point was a distraction to change the subject—which providentially materialised in the form of Trent passing them on his way to the stage. They teamed up to tease him. It was good to be tandem again. Trent told them they were weird. That was good too.

When Trent had moved on, Jane asked Sonny to tell her what he had missed most about her. He told her that it was her 'damn aura'.

'My _aura_? When did you start talking like that? Are you trying to fill the gap that O'Neill's going to leave in our lives when he goes to the big house?'

'I don't know whether he'll end up actually doing time.' Sonny shrugged. 'But I guess he's not coming back to Lawndale High.'

'Yeah, it's strange to imagine.' Jane nodded thoughtfully. 'I almost feel like I'm going to miss him.'

'No you won't.'

'No, I won't.'

'But getting back to your question, I thought of you out here all summer, with your art and your humour, just being Jane Lane still, and I realised it's because you know exactly who you are, and that makes you exactly the role model that I needed this summer, when I was questioning everything I said and did.'

Jane grinned and nodded. 'You know, you're absolutely right about me.'

With a sudden electric rush, Sonny felt himself returning to normal. 'Shall I attempt further heights of ego-inflation?'

'Please do.'

Before he could, they were interrupted by a burst of feedback from the speakers, followed by Trent's voice saying, 'Hey. We're Mystik Spiral. And this one's for Sonny and Jane.'

Sonny wasn't thrilled by the idea of having a Mystik Spiral song dedicated to them. 'I hope it's not "I Will Survive" ', he said, with a fleeting glance at Jane.

'Oh, please make it "Wind Beneath My Wings" ', was Jane's response.

A moment later, the Mystik Spiral lyrics rolled over them, and although Sonny struggled to blot them out, he couldn't stop some of the words getting through: 'When [_something something_], when the bummers bum, we'll still be freakin' friends! When the whip comes down, [_something something_] freakin' friends! Freakin' friends! Freakin' friends! Till we come to bad ends, we're freakin' friends! Freakin' friends! [_something something_] …'

Sonny looked at Jane for a moment and caught her looking back at him. Truly, it was as Max the drummer had once said: 'You go up against the Spiral, they're going to take you down!'

* * *

><p>Before the time had come for the Spiral's (and Sonny's) departure, the 'freakin' friends' had reached the point where Sonny could talk with Jane about his break-up with Tom and the 'upper-crustiness' that had driven it, and Jane could point out to him that the Sloanes weren't actually jerks, and the silver lining of their 'incredibly well-stocked refrigerator'. More importantly, Sonny could invite Jane to come back with them, and also not take it personally when Jane had what she herself admitted was some dumb notion of seeing the art colony program through to the end. 'Anyway', she pointed out, 'it's just another two weeks and then we'll be back at school!' She realised what she had said. 'Wait … what's my point?'<p>

Sonny helped her out. 'That life sucks no matter what, so don't be fooled by location changes.'

'You really should write fortune cookies.'

They made their farewells, agreeing that Jane would call Sonny when she got back to Lawndale, and then Jane started back to her cabin only to stop and turn to say, 'Um, I don't believe I'm about to say this, but … you should give Tom another shot. He's not a bad guy. And you could use the recreation.'

'Um', said Sonny, feeling less bad about it because this time Jane had said it first, 'is this a final exam, just to see whether I'm still dumb enough to risk screwing up a really important friendship for a boyfriend?'

'No, I think I finally am over that thing about you and Tom going behind my back.'

'Yeah, right.'

Jane made a cryptic gesture with one hand. 'I know I kind of said I was over it before, when actually I was still under it, but … you could give it some thought on the ride back.'

'I don't think so.'

'Or converse with the band.' Jane grinned. 'The choice is yours.'

* * *

><p>The moment Sonny realised he was back to normal was when he was back in Lawndale, in his bedroom, reading, and Quinn made another uninvited unexplained entry. Without missing a beat, he told her that her sandals did not make her toes look fat.<p>

Quinn wasn't back to normal, though. She took Sonny's remark as confirmation of something her tutor had said about her superficiality. Of course, it was true that Sonny's point had been that Quinn was shallow and superficial, but he'd been telling her that for about ten years and she'd never reacted the way she was reacting now. As far as Sonny could see, being shallow and superficial was just Quinn playing to her strengths. This time, though, Quinn seemed to be about to break down, just because some brainy egghead had told her that he only dated girls with 'depth'.

Sonny was puzzled. 'How did it even come up?'

Quinn didn't answer in words, but the evidence of seismic strain in her expression increased.

Sonny felt a blow from the clue stick. 'Oh, boy. _You _asked _him _out?'

Silent weeping.

Had Sonny had tears on his face, that day when Quinn found him on the couch and helped him out of it? He had no idea. Maybe he'd wept, maybe he hadn't.

'Quinn, I don't take back anything I've ever said to you about your shallowness, but it's not the whole truth about you. It's something you use, like armour, or like a mask, so you can fit in, to protect yourself.'

'You mean, sort of like the way you keep people away to protect yourself by being really unfriendly and stuff?'

'Don't change the subject', Sonny said automatically, although he had to admit to himself that it wasn't a shallow or superficial thing to say. After a moment, he went on, 'You really liked him, huh?' Quinn nodded. 'Was it because of his looks?' Quinn pulled a face and shook her head. 'Well, then, if you could see past that—it means that mask you wear most of the time still isn't the face of the real Quinn.'

Quinn wiped away the tears. 'Thanks, Sonny.' She sniffed. 'Damn it, I even told him I liked him! I _never _do that!'

'Well, that wasn't a shallow or a superficial thing to do.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Quinn, there was a boy at that stupid day camp I had to go to who was having a really rough time. His parents were jerks who didn't want to know him. I thought if maybe I could get talking with him it might help a little. And just when I thought I might be getting through to him, he decided he didn't want to know me at all.'

'Why?'

'Because I'm gay.'

'Oh.' Quinn winced.

'Sometimes people slap you in the face. But you have to keep reaching out to them. You have to give them a chance.'

Quinn sighed. 'I wish David had given me a chance.'

'The way I heard it, he did. Isn't that right? He was going to quit because you weren't paying attention to the tutoring, so you told him you'd apply yourself properly and he gave you another chance? And then you learned a bunch of stuff and found out you don't have to be a dummy if you don't want to.'

Quinn stood in silence digesting everything. Then she shook herself and looked at Sonny, noticing that he was watching her. 'Oh!' she said, 'I must look a mess! I have to go and clean up now.' She left the room hurriedly.

'How did I come up with all that crap?' Sonny said to the empty air. 'I have to be more careful about the people I listen to.'

* * *

><p>Tom knew the route Sonny and Jane normally took on their way home from school, so he took a chance and cruised along it in time to catch them on the afternoon of the first day back. He was encouraged to see that they were walking together. He'd always thought it would be hard to split those two up for long.<p>

Jane spotted him first, even though she hadn't seen his new car before. (Well, his slightly-less-old-and-rusty-than-the-previous-one car. He'd had to accept his grandmother's latest discarded Jaguar after the incident the previous spring when his parents had his old Pinto towed away in the middle of the night.) 'Whoa!' Jane said as he pulled up. 'Nice car. Where's Jeeves?'

'I killed him for his uniform. How are you doing?' he said to be polite, although her attitude had already given him the most important information.

'I'm okay', she said. Then she tipped her head to indicate Sonny. 'He's pretty okay, too.'

'Yeah', said Tom, 'I know that.' He exchanged greetings with Sonny and then offered him a ride. Sonny hesitated, looking at Jane as if concerned about plans they might have that Tom might be interrupting. The way Jane looked at Sonny told Tom everything else he needed to know. She gave her friend a light-hearted farewell, promising to call him later, and left.

Sonny turned to Tom. He did look pretty okay. Tom opened the door for him, and they drove the few blocks to the Morgendorffers', casting brief appraising glances at each other on the way. Tom stopped the car in front of the house. Sonny thanked him for the ride and started to excuse himself, half-turning towards the door, but when Tom asked for a hearing, Sonny returned to a seated position with what, for him, amounted to alacrity.

Tom had spent some time preparing in his head what he was going to say. 'There's nothing I can do about the club, my family, the whole thing. And yes, I can see where all of that could make you uncomfortable.' He paused for a response and Sonny thanked him. So far, so good.

Tom moved on to the next point. 'But would you also agree that maybe I was right when I said this dating stuff is new to you, and you're afraid of getting hurt, and maybe you were looking for an out before you got too pulled in?' He paused again, but this time Sonny didn't respond. Tom knew he was on the edge of a minefield, but he couldn't see any choice but to go on, as cautiously as he knew how. 'And … well, there's something else that's still a bit new to you, beyond just the fact of dating in general? I mean, I've seen that you've got no hesitation about announcing your new identity to the world, no matter how they're going to react, but _I _know that doesn't necessarily mean you've adjusted to the novelty of it yourself. I don't want to come off sounding like a know-it-all about this, because I don't know it _all_, but do you think you could give me credit for knowing _something_?'

Sonny muttered something that Tom didn't catch. 'Sonny?' he said quietly.

Sonny repeated himself. 'Maybe some of what you said is true.' He took a deep breath and looked Tom in the eye. 'And, maybe, you know, a little from Column A and a little from Column B. Perhaps.' He glanced away again.

Tom said, 'So, do you think you're ready to try again? Do you think you could give it a fair chance this time? Because I really think it could be worth persevering if you're prepared to make the effort with me.' He looked Sonny in the eye again. 'Please?'

Sonny nodded once slowly and then twice more vigorously.

Tom settled back into his seat. 'But don't turn sentimental on me now, okay?'

'Who, me? My identity hasn't changed that much.' Sonny took another deep breath. 'Okay, then. I feel good about this. See ya.' Sonny opened the car door to get out.

Tom leaned forward to start the car again, and was completely blindsided to find Sonny's arms around him, not even having realised that Sonny had leapt back into the car. As they kissed he thought, _Yes. Definitely worth persevering._

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Through A Lens Darkly' by Glenn Eichler, 'Speedtrapped' by Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil, and 'Is It Fall Yet?' by Glenn Eichler and Peggy Nicoll<strong>  
><em>


	54. Turning To Account

**Not So Different**

_**54. Turning To Account**_

'You owe me hugely for making me miss the biggest football game of the year', Jane said to Sonny.

'You hate football.'

'Hey! Don't try any of your twisty-turny mind games on me, Morgendorffer.'

They were taking another look at the announcement on the bulletin board before going in to the auditorium for the meeting: the school review meeting which Ms Li had called for Super Bowl Sunday. At that, 'called' was an overstatement: Li's announcement over the public address system, asking students to tell their parents about the meeting, had been barely over the threshold of audibility. Admittedly, her explanation for not distributing a written invitation had some plausibility: the school had been genuinely running short of many things, not just paper.

Defoe had run out of red paint and hadn't been able to afford more. Onepu had grieved bitterly, and at length, about the deprivation for her students represented by the cancellation, for lack of funds, of their excursion to the planetarium. DeMartino had been trying to teach about the war in Chechnya with a map so old that it didn't even show Chechnya. So far the only teacher who seemed happy about the situation was Mr O'Neill's replacement, Mr Taylor. (Kevin's brain had still not fully integrated the understanding that sharing a surname didn't have to mean he was related to Brittany, although the fact that the two stood at opposite extremes of humanoid diversity would have been a clue to any normal intellect.) Unable to afford real printed copies of the play he was teaching, _Doctor Faustus_, Taylor had instead distributed photocopies produced on the school's one ancient machine, and when several students had complained about their legibility, or lack of same, he had told them that they had all been mollycoddled long enough and that they needn't expect any weak-minded touchy-feely nonsense from him: it was about time they all toughened up and learned to cope with the real world.

Anyway, it might well be true that the principal couldn't afford to send letters to parents about the school review meeting. But that didn't explain why she'd made the announcement just after the bell rang, and in the softest possible voice. It also didn't explain why she had scheduled the meeting for a date which Sonny calculated to be a Sunday, engendering in him a suspicion which was inflamed further when Kevin and Brittany pointed out, what would not have occurred to him unaided, that the nominated date was, specifically, Super Bowl Sunday.

So the principal had something she wanted to spring on an unprepared Lawndale High, and therefore wanted nobody to come to the review meeting where she announced it. Figuring that out was the easy part. The hard part was when Sonny told his mother that she should make a point of going to the meeting and paying extra-close attention, especially if Principal Li started talking very quietly. His parents had to go to his mother's office Super Bowl party. Helen had even gone to the trouble of calling in favours from no less than five of her colleagues to get them to promise to talk with Jake. She suggested that if Sonny was so concerned about the review meeting, he should go himself.

_Damn! _thought Sonny. _I really should have known better than to light the fuse on that petard._

* * *

><p>Apart from Sonny himself and Jane, there was nobody in the seating area of the auditorium—until ninety seconds after they'd taken their seats, when Mr Taylor materialised like a pantomime demon, as if he'd been on lookout for them, and took a seat behind, above, and just slightly to one side of them (Jane didn't even notice until Sonny clued her in). On the stage there were only Li and a landshark Sonny didn't recognise. After explaining the context of the meeting, which was the acute budgetary crisis of which the entire audience was already only too keenly aware, Li introduced the congealed lump of toxicity she had invited to speak to the meeting as a Mr Leonard Lamm. He submitted for their consideration—in other words, Li had already sold out to him for—a proposal to secure additional discretionary funding for the school in exchange for an exclusive contract with a soda company to distribute and promote its product in the school and at school events and functions. In other words, as Sonny privately translated, there'd be vending machines everywhere and the school would be turned into a series of gigantic advertising billboards. Being the son of a marketing consultant was like a course of vaccinations.<p>

At the completion of Lamm's pitch, Li appeared to have been translated to bliss, but her pep-rally performance for an audience of Sonny Morgendorffer and Jane Lane was an enigma. Sonny knew Li had met them both before. Maybe she was driven by an anxiety induced by the presence of Taylor, to which Sonny also found himself unpleasantly sensitive. Or maybe she just couldn't think of an alternative, and also couldn't think of an alternative to allocating time for 'public' comment, even if it was only three minutes.

Sonny rose (because otherwise there would have been no point in coming at all) and was not recognised. Li was on the point of wrapping up, so he opened his mouth.

'Excuse me?'

'Um, yes, Mr Morgendorffer?'

'If Lawndale High gets this deal with a soda company, the way it was explained, then any money received under this contract can be spent for the school's benefit, any way the school sees fit?'

Lamm stepped back to the podium to field the question. 'Yes, it's all for the school's benefit, and all you kids have to do is what you'd do anyway, drink soda.'

'So if, purely for the sake of example, the school wanted to use the money to sponsor a new student club, there'd be no objection from the soda company?'

Li got an uneasy expression on her face, reassuring Sonny that she did remember him, but before she could interpose, Lamm gave Sonny the affirmative response he'd been hoping to springboard off.

'Then there'd be no problem with the soda company's money being used to sponsor a Gay-Straight Alliance at Lawndale High, which currently doesn't have one?' Lamm's expression changed, and he hesitated for a moment, even throwing a glance at Li, who started to move forward to the podium again. Sonny went in for the kill. 'As I understand it, if the school sponsors other student clubs, it could lay itself open to a legal challenge if it refused the same recognition to a Gay-Straight Alliance. I'm sure my mother could confirm that.' He could see Li whispering in Lamm's ear, and knew she was telling him about Helen Morgendorffer as Sonny changed tacks. 'But this proposal is an opportunity, not a problem! Lawndale High could have the first Gay-Straight Alliance in the county. It could lead the State. Let's think about how that could redound to its reputation. And it could all be thanks to the generous sponsorship of whichever soda company enters into the exclusive contract. We could design banners and logos combining the school colours and the company's advertising colours for its soda. The soda would get the credit from being linked with its proud sponsorship of the Gay-Straight Alliance! You could design something like that, couldn't you, Jane?' He inclined his head towards her.

Jane stood up. 'Sure! That could be a great art project for the school and fantastic free advertising for the soda company. And for the Gay-Straight Alliance, of course, at the same time.'

Sonny gave her a concealed hand signal of approval. What was happening on stage between Lamm and Li, although the actual words were inaudible in the middle of the auditorium, made it needless to continue. Their gestures and their postures were not those of happy people. They seemed to have forgotten their audience once it fell silent. Then they seemed to remember it. They both straightened up and cleared their throats, and then Li stepped back to the podium and grabbed the microphone.

'I'm sure we can all agree that some interesting points have been raised in discussion, but darn it, our time is up. I've got Super Bowl fever! Go, team, go!'

Sonny and Jane stood and watched as Leonard Lamm walked off the stage, with Principal Li following and visibly still trying to talk him round. Then they turned to leave the auditorium, only to start at finding Mr Taylor unexpectedly right in front of them.

_Am I getting that careless? _Sonny thought.

Taylor turned a careful stare of inspection first on Sonny and then on Jane, then retracted slightly and spoke.

'Planning on a career in marketing, perhaps? Devising a brand recognition strategy for Queer Cola?' His jaw tightened and he moved his head very slightly from side to side. Then he turned and walked out of the auditorium, casting one brief look at them over his shoulder without halting on the way.

Jane asked Sonny, 'What was that about?'

'He was saying that he saw what we'd done there to torpedo Li's plan, that he knows that we think we're clever, and that he'll be keeping an eye on us.'

'Huh.' After a pause, Jane said, 'He almost makes me miss O'Neill.'

'You don't miss O'Neill.'

'No, I don't. Anyway, do you think he's right about your torpedoing Li's plan?'

Sonny nodded. 'Yes, the school is not going to be further commercialised this time. It's not a bad result, but I've exhausted that ammunition now. I'll be disappointed if a better occasion to use it comes up later in the year. I can't afford to risk having Li trap me into actually having to start up a Gay-Straight Alliance.'

'You wouldn't want that', concurred Jane.

'A genuine extracurricular activity? An official school-sponsored club?' Sonny shook his head. 'I've already got all the gay-straight alliance I can handle.'

They walked out together.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Fizz Ed' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	55. Still Trying To Find A Map

**Not So Different**

_**55. Still Trying To Find A Map**_

'Dad, can I talk to you about something?'

'Sure! Any time for my boy! Oh, wait, I'm getting some sort of message in code. Looks technical. This is exciting!'

Sonny looked over his father's shoulder at the screen of the laptop computer.

'Dad, you're leaning on the keyboard.'

'Oh, right. Good call.' Jake straightened up.

'If you need to concentrate on getting a grip on this new job, I'll leave you to it.' (Sonny's father had recently accepted a 'media leadership position' at an Internet start-up company. Figuring out why he'd done so was not nearly as hard as figuring out why they'd offered it to him.)

'No, I'm getting the hang of this Interwebnet superhighwaysurfing already. I'm really going to wow 'em at work tomorrow! What's on your mind, Sonny?'

'It's about … Tom.'

As Sonny continued, his father shifted his seat to face him directly.

'You see, we've been dating now for about six months and—'

His father squirmed and started involuntarily gurning. 'Uh, Sonny, if this is about …'

'It's not about sex, if that's what you're thinking. Don't worry, true love waits.'

'True love?' Jake was wide-eyed with puzzlement. 'Is—but hold on, what does it wait for?'

'It was a joke, Dad. Don't worry, if I get pregnant you'll be the first one I tell.'

'That was another joke?' His father grinned nervously and opened his eyes even wider. 'Right?'

Sonny continued without change of expression. 'I'll stop making jokes now, Dad. The thing about this six-month anniversary is that I wouldn't even have realised it was coming up if not for Quinn. She's been getting anniversary presents, like flowers and chocolates, and I noticed because I answered the door to one of the delivery boys.'

'Wait—what anniversaries does Quinn have? Is she—I mean, has she—'

'Apparently she's found some way of milking boys for presents to mark the anniversaries of previous occasions when they've given her presents. Growing up in this family, Quinn has a keen sense of the market and of market value.' _Including the market value of her no let's not think about that and let's not get Dad thinking about it either right-about-face back to the subject at hand. _'There's no more significance than that, but talking about anniversaries set Quinn off talking about my anniversary with Tom. Like I said, I wouldn't have paid any attention to it or even noticed it, but Quinn was going on about how the fuss a guy makes over anniversaries shows how much he cares.'

'It does? I mean, yes, it does! For our last anniversary I got your mother—ah—well, anyway, this one time I got her—I mean, I arranged for—I mean—oh God, Sonny, do you know what date our wedding anniversary is?'

Sonny avoided reacting to his father's emotions. 'Maybe making a fuss about anniversaries isn't so important', he continued in a factual manner. 'Come to think of it, does Mom make a lot of fuss for you on your anniversary?' When the only response he got was more embarrassed stammering, Sonny continued, 'Dad, what I was thinking about, what I wanted to ask you about, was something that Quinn didn't see. She expects boys to do things for her, on anniversaries of whatever, and at other times. That's just part of the way she relates to them. And it seems as if the boys she dates accept that, and I guess it might be the same with some other girls, like the ones in Quinn's Fashion Club.'

'Quinn's club? Is she the head of a club? Wow!'

Sonny sighed. 'She's been the Vice-President of the Fashion Club for the last two years, Dad, and there are only four members in the club altogether, counting Quinn herself.'

'Still, Vice-President? For two years? That's pretty good, isn't it?'

Sonny squared his mental shoulders and relentlessly drove his metaphorical plough forward through the loam of his father's outpourings. 'When Quinn thinks about my dating Tom, she thinks about it like her dating boys. But I'm a boy too. Quinn thinks her dates should make a fuss over her for anniversaries, so she thinks Tom should make a fuss over me for anniversaries. But I'm not a girl. Should I still expect Tom to make a fuss over me for anniversaries? Why shouldn't I be the one who's supposed to make a fuss over him for anniversaries? I don't know what to think, and that's why I'm asking you.'

For a minute there was silence. Then Sonny's father cleared his throat and spoke.

'Do you know what Tom thinks? Does he act like he expects you to make a fuss over him? There's no rule about this stuff that works for everybody. Don't think about men and women or about gays and straights—think about you and Tom.'

Sonny reflected rapidly. What were his expectations of this thing with Tom? He didn't know; he'd never been involved with somebody this way before. But Tom had—'Thanks, Dad, that's very helpful. I'll leave you to your work now.'

'Very helpful? It was? I mean, it was my pleasure, Sonny, you're always welcome.'

* * *

><p>'Huh?' Sonny realised Jane had been talking to him. Tuning <em>people <em>out was a useful life skill. Tuning _Jane _out was … was …

'Out with it, Morgendorffer. What's wrong?'

And he had come over to her place to talk with her. But … but … 'Well, it's, uh, Tom.'

Jane grinned. 'My ex, your current. This is slightly uncomfortable but how can I resist? Go on.'

'Well, I like hanging out with him, but it seems like all we do is hang out. We never do any of those conventional dating things, like going out to fancy restaurants or … or … I guess I don't know so much about what people do on conventional dates. But do you know what I mean? We never go in for any of that flowers-and-candy kind of stuff.'

'I know what you mean.' Jane nodded. 'That's Tom for you. When he was dating me we never went in for that flowers-and-candy stuff, either.'

'Really? Because …'

'That is if you don't count that time he took me for a horse-and-carriage ride.'

'Oh …'

'And he did take me to an Italian restaurant once', Jane went on, 'with musicians, and he got them to play my favourite song.'

'So apart from the carriage ride, which I'm guessing was moonlit, and the fancy restaurant, which I'm guessing was candlelit, what conventionally romantic things have the Romans ever done for us, right?'

'Don't make a big deal out of it. It's not like I actually enjoyed those things', Jane said, and then, as Sonny looked at her, 'Well, not much.'

'So tell me something else. While the two of you were dating, did you ever arrange anything like that for Tom?'

'Me? For Tom?'

'Do you mean that he was the guy and you were the chick?'

'No, I mean that he's the fabulously wealthy son of the upper classes and I'm a Lane. He could afford that kind of stuff, easily. I can't.' Jane cocked her head. 'Are you perhaps thinking that he's treating you differently from the way he treated me because you're a boy and I'm a girl? because I can tell you that doesn't sound like the Tom I know, if that's any help to you.'

'I don't know. That's the problem. I've never dated anybody else, I've never even thought about dating anybody, and I haven't spent the last five years of my life like Quinn sitting around with my current clique doing forensic examinations of every date any of the group has been on. I started out thinking about whether it was wrong that Tom wasn't making the kind of fuss about me that boys make about Quinn, and then I started wondering whether I should be the one giving instead of receiving.'

'Nah, Tom hates that corny crap.'

'So why did he take you on those fancy dates?'

Up to this point Jane had kept working on the artistic piece she was creating, but now Sonny noticed that she'd paused. 'They were exceptions. Most of the time we just hung out, you know, watching television and making fun of it, that kind of thing. Why did he suddenly make a big fuss of a date with all the trimmings? I never thought about it before.' She started working again. 'Here's a thought for you. Why don't you discuss this with Tom? It's a crazy idea, but it just might work.'

'Then he'll think that I care about this.'

Jane gave Sonny the hairy eyeball. 'You do care about this.'

'But I already hate myself for caring about it. I don't want him to hate me for caring about it, too.'

'Let me put it like this. You have two choices. You can have an open, frank, candid discussion with Tom, laying all your cards on the table. Or you can play mind games with him like a typical girl.'

Sonny shifted uneasily. 'Why should a boy have to act differently from a girl?'

'It's not the "girl", compadre, it's the "typical". Is that what you want to be?'

Sonny flinched. 'Now turn the knife counterclockwise.'

'Hey, what are friends for?'

* * *

><p>'Hey, Sonny!' Tom smiled with pleasure. 'Good to see you! What brings you round these parts? Come on in!'<p>

'Oh, I was just taking a walk in the neighbourhood, thought I'd see whether you wanted to join me.'

Tom drew his head back to look at Sonny from a greater distance, but all he said was, 'I'll just get my jacket. It'll only take a minute.'

Three minutes later Tom finally broke the silence they'd been walking in by saying, 'So, just happened to be in the neighbourhood, yeah?'

'Well, I've been thinking. Either you call me, or else you come round to my place unannounced. So I thought, why should it always be up to you? I figured I'd change things around and take the initiative myself. Wouldn't want to get into a rut.'

'Fair enough, but I don't feel like we _are_ in a rut. I just feel comfortable being with you. I can relax and be myself. I wouldn't be calling you and coming round all the time if I didn't want to hang out with you. Don't get me wrong, I like it now that you're taking the initiative, but maybe that's just one of those things you needed time before you were ready for. I could understand that. I'm really happy with the way things are going.'

Sonny nodded. 'You're really happy. That's good.'

'Hey, I recognise that absence of tone of voice. How about you? Are you happy? Is something wrong, Sonny?'

They were walking through the park now, and Sonny invited Tom to sit down on a bench with him before answering his question.

'You haven't noticed that I've been kind of sensitive lately?'

'Well, not until now—should I feel bad about that?'

'In a way, it's kind of a compliment.' Sonny permitted himself the luxury of allowing one of his eyebrows to move up and down for a moment. 'I spent a lot of hard years learning not to let things show and if I'd lost the knack it might feel like a waste.'

Tom nodded slowly. 'If there's something you haven't been letting show to me and now you're going to, that's kind of a compliment too.'

Sonny took a deep breath. 'I give you my solemn word that this would never even have occurred to me if Quinn had not, for some ungodly reason, stored the information and reminded me, but apparently we're coming up for the six-month anniversary of our first date.'

'So you've been feeling sensitive about something that you wouldn't even have remembered if not for _Quinn_?'

Sonny scuffed his foot on the ground. 'I know, I know. Nobody is more acutely conscious than I am of how ridiculous the idea is of my listening to Quinn. But I can't deny that she has plenty of experience of what happens when people date, even if it's only a certain kind of people, and I surely don't. I suppose I let myself listen to her in a moment of weakness. I just happened to answer the door when some poor sap arrived to deliver the latest in a procession of flowers and chocolates for her, and my mouth watering for the chocolates had an effect on me. I was hoping she had some debilitating illness and had just forgotten to share the good news, but they were all anniversary gifts, or pseudo-anniversary gifts. And that got her started on our anniversary, yours and mine, and what anniversaries meant in general, and although I knew it was stupid it got me thinking about whether you should be doing something special for me, and then about whether I should be doing something special for you, and then about where our whole relation-date-ship thing is going.' Sonny took another deep breath. 'Because it doesn't seem to be going on a carriage ride to a fancy restaurant with musicians playing a special song.'

'What? Oh … you mean with Jane? Listen, I only took her on those dates after our relation-date-ship thing started to fall apart. I started acting romantic to hide the fact that I no longer felt romantic. And, just in case you've been wondering, it had nothing to do with her being a girl and your being a boy.'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'I guess we're doing okay, then. But that's no reason why I can't invite you round to my place for a special non-anniversary celebration, is it?'

'Is that important to you after all? because it isn't to me.'

'It isn't to me, either, but that's no reason why we can't do it.'

'Then I accept with pleasure.' Tom stood up. 'Lead on, gentle sir.'

Sonny stood up as well. 'You realise that I may never be able to afford carriage rides and musicians? If we ever want those, you'll probably have to pay.'

Tom shrugged as they started walking again. 'What do you have in mind for tonight?'

'I reckoned Quinn was the trigger for all of this, so I figured we should do her a favour in exchange.'

Tom raised his eyebrows and his voice. 'A favour?'

'Protect her from getting zits by eating up one of her boxes of chocolates.'

'Eat her present?' Tom cocked his head. 'You're sure she won't mind?'

'On the contrary. Of course I'm not sure of that.'

Tom nodded in understanding of the kind of favour Sonny was talking about. 'Okay then.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Road Worrier' by Anne D Bernstein and 'Sappy Anniversary' by Anne D Bernstein<strong>_


	56. Double Or Quits

**Not So Different**

_**56. Double Or Quits**_

Sonny and Jane were walking along the hallway together talking about a series of wagers they'd been having. There'd been one about which there were more of in a box, ZooZoo Drops or Juicy Joes. There'd been one, when they noticed Kevin Thompson one day at the pizzeria, about whether he would show off to his friends by crushing a can against his head or by covering his eyes with slices of pepperoni and pretending to be blind. There'd been one in Mr DeMartino's class about whether he'd address his students as 'imbeciles' or as 'morons'. Each time Jane had unwisely backed her judgement against Sonny's. As a cumulative result of doubling up in an effort to retrieve her losses, Jane was now forty dollars in the hole. If Sonny had had a conscience, it would have been starting to bother him, but he reminded himself that it's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep money. Obviously Jane was unaccustomedly flush with cash and didn't know what to do with it. From that point of view, by taking some of it away from her he was helping to solve her problem.

His attention was not so consumed by their discussion that he had stopped exercising his peripheral vision, and he caught a glimpse of Sandi Griffin heading in the opposite direction. He knew she'd been absent from school for a while after an accident in which she had broken one leg, so he wasn't surprised to see her returning in a cast and on crutches. Just slightly more surprising was the weight she'd gained while she was off her feet. It was odd that the President of the Fashion Club wasn't bothered by weight gain, even just a few pounds.

Or maybe she was?

He and Jane had just walked past Quinn, Stacy, and Tiffany, so Sandi was bound to encounter that group in the next ninety seconds …

Hmm …

Sonny asked Jane to excuse him and go ahead, and then loitered in the hallway to see what would happen next.

From a carefully measured distance he could see Quinn and the others greeting Sandi, and he got a clear impression that things weren't going well. Then some boys joined the group, and while the girls' attention was consequently diverted, Sandi tried to flee.

There's a limit to the speed a person on crutches can attain. Sonny mentally plotted Sandi's trajectory to her target exit and timed himself to arrive at it smoothly an instant ahead of her. He pushed open the door and went through it, then lingered on the other side to hold it open for her. Then he closed it carefully behind her.

She looked at him, her eyes wide with confusion, and then said, 'Thank you, uh … thank you …'

'Sonny.'

'Thank you … Sonny.' Whenever Sandi had addressed him before, even when they'd been working together against Quinn, it had been as 'Quinn's cousin', or something of the kind.

She leaned back against the door, closed her eyes, and shook herself as much as her crutches permitted. Then she swallowed, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes again. 'This is a great opportunity for Quinn', she said. 'The Fashion Club's strict policy on obesity means I will have to resign, and Quinn, as Vice-President, will become the new President.' She straightened up, propped herself on her crutches again, and looked at Sonny. 'Of the Fashion Club. But please let me be the first to tell her … Sonny.' She swung herself back into motion.

Sonny watched her go, scratching behind his ear. He was thinking that she must have modified her ideas about the best ways of manipulating him into serving her goals, when Mr Taylor suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

'Morgendorffer.' He looked Sonny up and down. 'I see you out here and I wonder whether you were perhaps thinking of leaving school premises during school hours, which I'm sure you know is not permitted.' He shook his head. 'Probably not. You're not stupid, are you, Morgendorffer? But perhaps you think I'm stupid? Perhaps you think I can't recognise troublemakers? Whatever the reason you're out here instead of inside where you should be, I know it's subversive.' Taylor flexed his neck muscles so that his head moved from side to side, without shifting his stare from Sonny. 'Your principal puts a lot of faith in high-technology security measures, but when it comes to dealing with subversive troublemakers, I put more faith in low-technology solutions.' He tapped the side of his nose twice. 'My nose', he said, 'and my feet.' He raised one foot slightly, then brought it down hard and moved his heel as if grinding something under it.

'Is that a metaphor, Mr Taylor? I seem to recall Mr O'Neill trying to teach us something about metaphors.'

Taylor blinked once like a lizard.

Sonny went inside, thinking, _Li won't be _my _principal for more than another few months—you're going to be stuck with her for a lot longer. _He dismissed the thought. Sandi and the Fashion Club and Quinn, that was more likely to be a problem for him now than Taylor. As Sandi had made him see, Quinn might become President of the Fashion Club, and that could be ugly.

Or it might make no difference at all. But he couldn't rely on that sort of luck. He had to monitor the situation.

* * *

><p>There was something more on Sonny's mind, Jane thought, than the episode of <em>Sick, Sad World <em>they were watching (a psychic Nazi-hunter peddling a theory about the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler). She took the opportunity to ask him about her gambling debt, but he wasn't distracted enough to have forgotten that. Then Quinn came in and made a breathless announcement about how Sandi had resigned from the Fashion Club. Somehow (Jane could see that Quinn didn't understand the manoeuvre herself) Sandi had manipulated Quinn into resigning as well in solidarity. With both of them gone, Quinn didn't think the Fashion Club could go on.

Fine, so why had she chosen Jane and Sonny as the audience for her announcement? What made her think they would care? Jane looked to Sonny for a snarky response but he still had something on his mind. She nudged him and said, 'Should we alert _Sick, Sad World_?'

Quinn gasped and left the room, but Sonny was still silent, so Jane took up the slack. 'Did I hear right? The death of the Fashion Club? That at last the people shall be free?'

'Not likely', Sonny said. 'That club's like a hydra. You cut off one airhead, two more grow back', he continued, but his heart didn't seem to be in it.

How to snap him out of his funk? She offered him a bet on the fate of the Fashion Club and he accepted. He didn't make a further sound or move, but she could tell the gears had engaged. Good, they could use a contest: powers of manipulation pitted against each other.

* * *

><p>Quinn couldn't remember exactly what she'd said to Sandi. Sandi had said that she (Quinn) would have to be President of the Fashion Club, what with Sandi herself resigning. Then she (Quinn) had said something about how hard it would be to replace Sandi, or something. She was pretty sure she hadn't meant that she <em>wouldn't <em>be President. But somehow Sandi thought that was what she meant, or something. She'd said wonderful things about what a good friend Quinn was being, resigning from the fashion club along with her best friend. It sounded too good to be a mistake.

That just left one problem. Quinn thought she remembered Stacy saying that Quinn was _her _best friend. And Stacy and Tiffany had said wonderful things about Quinn being President Quinn. When she had to tell them that she was resigning along with Sandi, they both started begging her to come back. They said Sandi didn't have to know. Quinn had been very confused. She promised them she'd think about it.

She didn't want to think about it, though. Thinking about it was too hard. She was hoping something else would happen so she wouldn't have to think about it.

When Stacy and Tiffany walked away from her again, the only thing that was happening was that Sonny's friend Jane Lane was talking to Brittany Taylor in front of Brittany's locker, which was near Quinn's.

'I knew this girl who went behind her friend's back', Jane was saying, 'and felt so guilty about it she ended up in an insane asylum and they made her wear drawstring pants and a big plastic bracelet.'

'Serves her right', Brittany said, 'the back-stabber!'

_No! _Quinn thought. _I can't wear drawstring pants!_ She had no choice. She'd have to call Stacy and tell her that they'd just have to find some new members for the Fashion Club.

* * *

><p>Sonny was sitting at the kitchen table eating, and screening out most of what Quinn was saying on the phone to Stacy. He gathered the conversation was concerned with girls at school of whom he wished to know nothing, and how their features or clothes or whatever disqualified them for membership of the Fashion Club. If the Club broke up he'd lose his bet with Jane. Quinn wasn't in the Club any more, but she still seemed to be concerned about its survival.<p>

She still seemed to be concerned about Sandi and Sandi's weight gain, too, judging by what she said when she got off the phone. 'Ice cream out of the carton? You're going to end up like Sandi!'

'You mean, unable to be a member of the Fashion Club? If it can't recruit me, that'll be the worst blow it's suffered yet. I don't know how it's going to survive.'

'Sonny, you've never liked the …', Quinn started, but then she checked before continuing, '… ohh, I get it. I see what you're doing. I bet you've got some sort of plot going, haven't you? You _want _to see the Fashion Club fold up.'

Sonny put down his spoon. 'You're changing, Quinn. The Morgendorffers' little girl is finally growing up. It takes some kind of insight to think of something like that.' _But you still don't have enough insight to stop me from keeping one step ahead of you_, Sonny thought to himself as he continued. 'It just confirms the maturity you've shown over this recent development. The old Quinn Morgendorffer might have tried to protect her own popularity by returning everything to the way it used to be. She might have tried to get Sandi to lose weight and return to the old Sandi so that the Fashion Club could be restored. But not this new Quinn Morgendorffer! You're saying that you don't care about the effect on your popularity, all you want is to show that you will stand loyally by your friend and give her _whatever support she needs_ in making her own choices for her life.'

Quinn's eyes opened wide. 'Uh … that's right! Thank you, Sonny! Sorry, gotta go now!'

Sonny permitted himself a small sigh of satisfaction and returned his attention to the ice cream.

* * *

><p>Sonny knew how dedicated Quinn was to the maintenance of her appearance, and he figured she'd apply the same energy and commitment to licking Sandi's appearance into shape once he'd planted the idea in her head. For that matter, Sandi herself when on normal form must surely have been similarly obsessive, and he counted on that obsession returning once Quinn had given Sandi a starting kick. Still, no matter how driving and driven they were, Sandi's overweight couldn't be lost all at once. He might guess that Quinn was working hard on the project when she wasn't around, but he never saw her around much anyway, so any change there was hard to spot, and he had no way of knowing how she was spending her time without asking her, which would be way too suspicious. In the meantime his bet with Jane irritated them by hanging awkwardly suspended before settlement.<p>

They were reminded of it in the hallway when they overheard Stacy lamenting the Fashion Club's plight to Tiffany. 'Quinn's right', she said. 'There just aren't any girls up to the Fashion Club's standards. If only looks weren't everything.'

'I know', Tiffany agreed. 'Too bad we can't let boys in.'

Unprecedentedly, Tiffany's remark gave Stacy an idea: they could recruit boys for the Fashion Club! Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie were standing at their lockers just across the hallway from Sonny and Jane, so Stacy immediately invited them to her house that afternoon to have sodas with herself and Tiffany—in other words, with the (depleted) Fashion Club, though Stacy had, interestingly, more sense than to say so.

Initially the three boys were interested only in the prospect of seeing Quinn. (Their eagerness suggested that they hadn't been seeing much of her. That suggested she was taking time away from her usual activities to attend to the restoration of Sandi to form). Unable to offer them the company of Quinn, Stacy made the mistake of offering instead a discussion on swimwear. They reacted predictably to the idea of a discussion, but she made an adequate recovery by redescribing the invitation as an opportunity to look at (pictures of) girls in bikinis. That proved to be enough to draw them in.

Sonny pointed out to Jane that it sounded as if the Fashion Club were still operating, but Jane was still sublimely confident that she'd bet the right way. She offered to double the stakes and he accepted.

With the bet still to be settled, there was a doubling of Sonny's interest in finding out how Stacy's plan had worked. So it was not _entirely _unwelcome (although still surprising) when Stacy made a cautious approach to him some days later, after she'd scanned the hallway to make sure the coast was clear.

'Uh … Sonny', she said, and took a step closer. 'Hi.'

'Is there something you wanted from me?'

'Well', she said slowly, 'you remember that time at the Medieval Fair when we were riding on the Ferris Wheel? And you gave me some advice?'

'I gave you advice?'

Stacy nodded emphatically. 'Yes, about how I could talk with boys without dating them. And I did that. I asked Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie to come to a Fashion Club meeting to talk about swimwear. I thought, you know, they might be interested in how girls look in clothes, or in bikinis, anyway. But when I asked them which fabric they liked best they all ran out of the house.'

Anybody but Sonny would have laughed, or at least smiled. 'I suggested you could talk _with _boys, not that you should talk _at _them. That means you should look for topics that interest them as well as you.'

'But boys can be interested in different things, can't they?'

Now Sonny's mind started leaping forward. Stacy knew he was gay, and accepted it; she knew that some boys were interested in girls and some in boys. She must also be figuring that there could still be _some_ boys interested in fashion, and so in joining in Fashion Club discussions … he thought about explaining to her that just because he was gay, it didn't necessarily mean he was interested in fashion, but the prospect bored and depressed him.

Stacy, he reflected, was probably the sort of girl who might develop a crush on her best friend's older brother. But she was still, in a way, taking seriously his advice that she could talk with boys without dating them.

On further rapid reflection, he couldn't see anything to lose by just being honest with her, to a point. As far as the truth worked for you, nothing beat it.

'Stacy, Jane made a bet with me that the Fashion Club was going to break up. If I joined the Fashion Club, it would feel too much like trying to rig the bet. Sorry.'

'Oh.' Stacy's face fell. 'Well, um … nice talking to you. Um … say hi to Quinn for me.' She heaved a heavy sigh. 'I don't know whether the Fashion Club can survive, then. I'm about out of ideas, and I don't think Tiffany's ever had one in her life.'

Sonny was about to tell her he was sorry about that, but then he imagined Stacy saying, 'Yeah, because you want to win your bet.' Just because it was true didn't mean he wanted to hear her saying it. Luckily, unlike Stacy, he was used to saying nothing.

* * *

><p>Jane was washing her hands and watching Stacy mutter angrily to herself while she brushed her hair. If Stacy was in a bad mood, it could be a sign that the Fashion Club was heading for the rocks and Jane was going to be able to collect on her bet with Sonny. A moment later Tiffany came in and Jane kept watching.<p>

Tiffany asked Stacy the time of the Fashion Club meeting and Stacy exploded. Apparently she'd been doing all the work of running the club, or trying to, while Tiffany remained, as usual, completely self-absorbed, and Stacy had reached her (unusually high) boiling point. After doing an amusing impression of Tiffany being oblivious (it was too bad Sonny couldn't have been there to see it), Stacy announced she was quitting the Fashion Club.

'Hmm', said Tiffany, 'maybe I should quit, too.'

Stacy shrieked and ran out of the bathroom. Tiffany started plucking her eyebrows. Jane went out to find Sonny and collect her money.

She had wondered whether he'd take her word for it, but when she told him the story of what she'd seen, he just nodded and handed her the cash, which she pocketed.

They walked round the corner of the hallway and found a crowd of people gathered around … something. Sonny suggested it might be the man with the balloon animals, but when they got closer it turned out to be Quinn and Sandi. They were together again … and Sandi was back to her old weight.

They both knew what that meant. Jane pulled out the money she now owed Sonny, but he stopped her.

'The Fashion Club did break up. It's just that now it's going to get together again. What say we split the difference?'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Fat Like Me' by Peggy Nicoll<strong>_


	57. Second Wind

**Not So Different**

_**57. Second Wind**_

'I never went to a summer camp. I didn't know they had five-year reunions. It sounds like a weird idea to me. And you say your mother is forcing you to go to this one?'

'Wouldn't you say it counts as force if the only alternative she offers is to help with cleaning out the garage this weekend?'

Jane made a broad encircling gesture to indicate the Lane residence generally. 'In this household, any suggestion from anybody about cleaning out the garage would count as evidence for the existence of orbital mind control lasers.'

Sonny acknowledged this, but suggested that they'd got off the point.

'Come on', Jane said, 'camp's not so bad.' She looked at Sonny. 'Hmm … I was going to tell you about how _I _used to have to spend summers, on a commune with my parents' friends, making burlap sacks and building compost heaps—but I know what that particular blankness on your face means. Okay, I give in. My horror stories can't compete with what happened to you at camp.'

'There's blunt-force physical trauma', Sonny said, and then continued in a hollow voice, 'and then there are other kinds.' He switched to faking an announcer's tones (but with less modulation). 'Picture, if you will, a wildlife documentary team. What is this they have come upon? Why, it is a group of middle-schoolers who appear to be passing through the "summer camp" phase of their life cycle. They are gathered in a ring as if for some sort of ritual. Can the team get close enough to record their cries? Yes, they are chorusing "The Weird Kid and Amelia, sitting in a tree—" '

Jane interrupted. 'The Weird Kid?'

Sonny looked at her.

'Of course. Sorry, stupid of me, I should have known.'

'There were a few of them who could manage to remember my name from time to time, but—'

Jane finished the sentence for him. '—everybody knew who the Weird Kid was.' She waved a hand. 'Carry on.'

'You don't know the second line of that couplet?'

'K—I—S—S—I—N—G?'

'Except that a few of the more uninhibited choristers spelled out a different word, but they tend to avoid that kind of language in wildlife documentaries.'

'So', Jane said, 'who was Amelia?'

'She followed me around constantly at camp, for no good reason.'

Jane tilted her head to look at him sideways. 'And she wasn't deterred by the chanting? Did you ever consider the possibility that she had a crush on you?'

'No, I did not', Sonny said, again without modulation. 'I did not ever consider the possibility that she had a crush on me.'

'You know, Sonny, when we met you told me that you were a big outcast that nobody liked. Has our whole life together been a lie?'

Before Jane could ask any more questions, Trent came into the room. Not many people would have been able to recognise it, but he seemed troubled. Jane teased him a little and got him to reveal that he was troubled about Mystik Spiral's future and was even thinking about the possibility of breaking up. When he said he needed to get away and think, it gave Jane the idea of combining Trent's meditation retreat with a ride to Sonny's reunion. 'We can hang out in the sticks', she said, enlarging on the idea, 'while you're leading the colour war. A waste of time will be had by all.'

'Hmm', Trent enthused.

It sounded to Sonny as if Jane had nothing to do herself that would rank higher than cleaning out the garage. He couldn't reject her suggestion, despite the catch.

* * *

><p>'Ugh!' said the catch, looking out the window. 'Look how dirty those sheep are! From now on, I buy only imported sweaters. I bet there's not an outlet store within a hundred miles. Not that anybody would know what to buy after living out here for so long. Huh, some people are beyond help.'<p>

'I was just thinking the same thing', said Sonny. He wondered yet again whether Quinn had really enjoyed herself at Camp Grizzly or just had a selective memory.

They'd had to bring her along: Sonny couldn't have told his parents that his friends were offering him a lift to the reunion but Quinn wasn't invited.

Trent tried again to choke Quinn off by turning the subject back to the decline of Mystik Spiral, another concept which puzzled Sonny. You can't fall off the floor.

They were saved by the signpost for the turn-off. Quinn asked to be let out and said she'd find her own ride back. When she was gone, Jane said, 'She didn't say that just to get our hopes up, did she?'

It was a very short distance from the turn-off. By the time they'd found the parking area, pulled up, and descended from the vehicle, Quinn was walking up behind them. She rushed to join three other girls who looked regrettably familiar to Sonny. He explained to Jane.

'The first time we arrived here, we'd got out of the car, Mom had just taken my book away …' (Jane grinned knowingly) '… and we realised that Quinn was still hiding in the car. Then she saw that one of those girls had the same backpack she did and rushed over to join them. They bonded instantly over fashion and hairstyles and then one of them asked, and I quote exactly, "Who's that weird kid over there with your parents?" '

'And that's how you became "the Weird Kid", right?'

'Oh, it went beyond that. Quinn told them I was her distant cousin—and I've been her distant cousin ever since.'

Jane looked around. 'So this is where it all began.'

Sonny saw another familiar figure walking straight towards them as if alongside him would be a good place for her. 'You know', he said, just before the figure reached them and spoke, 'there's just a chance that this might be vaguely interesting.'

'Sonny? Is that you?'

'No, Amelia, I'm a decoy to flush out assassins.'

Amelia appeared to be as unsubtle and unsophisticated as ever. 'Thank God! I was afraid you weren't coming, and then there would be no reason for me to come, because I wouldn't have anyone to talk to. What's new?'

'It's funny you should ask me that question. There has been one big new change since we were innocent young middle-schoolers together, with our equally innocent fellow-campers carolling so gaily about the pure but deep bond they saw between us. If you were looking forward to our reunion as a way of reviving that bond, I'm afraid there is something important I need to tell you.'

'Oh!' said Amelia, and then, after one awkward moment (awkward for her), 'Oh!' again as she looked sideways to Jane. 'Ah … um …'

'Jane Lane', said Jane, with more cheer than seemed natural. 'I hear you're a big fan of Sonny's.'

Amelia looked from Jane to Sonny, then back to Jane, and then across and back again. 'Well … um … it's nice to meet you … I mean, you seem really … um …'

Sonny interrupted. 'I haven't told you my big news yet. You know, Jane was the first to guess. Well, Trent guessed too. This is Trent, Jane's brother. And Jane's been my best friend for the last two years. That is to say, most of the time. I didn't behave too well when Jane got a boyfriend a while back, and there was a bit of friction.'

Amelia looked back and forth again. 'But now you two are …?'

'Oh, we're okay with each other again now, although we went through a really bad time more recently when Jane's boyfriend and I kissed behind her back.'

'Jane's _boy_friend … ?'

'So now you know my big news. It came as a surprise to me too, I can tell you. I never had any idea. But Jane guessed, as I mentioned. She also guessed, when I told her about you and me at camp, that you might have had a crush on me—so I thought it was only fair to let you know how, even if I were to break up with Tom, there's no hope for you and me. Not that _that _should be surprising news. Comes more under the heading of "story of our lives", wouldn't you say?'

The colour Amelia turned reminded Sonny of the rash that had got him out of gym class, but he had to award her some points (entirely internally, of course) for her recovery.

'Well, uh, Sonny, it was great catching up with you! See you later around the reunion, okay?'

She walked off almost smoothly.

'I think you enjoyed that a little too much', Jane said.

'It's easy for you to talk. You haven't been sentenced to summer camp reunion.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Would you believe me if I said I was being cruel to be kind?'

'Nope.'

'The fact remains, whatever my motivation, whether she had a crush on me or not it'll be better for both of us if she doesn't keep hanging around me. See that big lug coming towards us now carrying the pile of Camp Grizzly T-shirts? That's Skip Stevens, self-appointed Big Man On Camp. Amelia's lucky I drove her off before Skip turned up.'

The lug referred to introduced himself as 'Alumni Coordinator' as he handed T-shirts to Trent and Jane. Apparently he hadn't cottoned that they weren't Grizzlies (or that summer camps didn't have 'alumni'). It was the most amusement he'd ever given Sonny, but then Skip cancelled it out by addressing him.

'Saw you having a sweet reunion with your _friend_, didn't want to interrupt. I bet _you're _excited to be back at Camp Grizzly.'

'Hey, man', said Trent, 'what's your problem?' It sounded as if he were simply curious.

'Wait a minute', said Skip. 'Are you two Grizzlies?'

The Lanes gave a negative response. 'Actually', Jane added, 'we have to be going now', as she headed back to the van.

'I might have known it!' Skip said. 'Camp Puma!' He snatched the T-shirt away from Trent as Jane opened the passenger door and got in. 'Hey, kitty-cat!' he called. 'Give that T-shirt back!'

Trent leaned forward to look at Skip more closely and Skip took a step backward. 'You're weird', Trent said. He looked at Sonny. 'You gonna be okay here, Sonny?'

'Born coping', Sonny said.

'Gotta hit the road', Trent said, and swivelled round to depart. As he opened the driver's door, Jane leaned out of her window and shouted, 'Hey, here's your T-shirt!' She tossed it at Skip so that it wrapped round his head. As she and Trent drove off, and before Skip could recover, Sonny walked away towards a picnic table pulling a book out of his pocket.

He was still sitting there reading when Mr Potts started mustering 'alumni' for a hike, with egregious assistance from Skip. Mr Potts looked smaller than Sonny remembered, and less enthusiastic. Sonny could almost have felt sorry for him, but that would have been too much like caring. At least Skip was taking a hike. Sonny looked up from his book long enough to see them all marching away leaving him alone in the world of literature.

Well, almost all. Amelia peeled off from the tail and came back to him. She explained that she'd had an eye out for him and had noticed his absence. 'You're missing the hike', she went on.

'To say that I'm "missing" it presupposes that I was aiming at it.'

Amelia's face took on a puzzled look. 'You're not going?' Her expression changed as she sat down across the table from him. 'This reminds me of how you boycotted the End-of-Summer campfire by the lake. That was so cool.'

'Actually', Sonny said, 'I wasn't invited.'

'Oh, right.' Amelia shifted awkwardly on her seat. 'Skip really didn't like you.'

'Nobody really liked me. I was picked on systematically from the first day of camp to the last. Remember that so-called "game" where Mr Potts threw a greased watermelon into the river and we were supposed to race to fetch it out? And the first time we played it Skip said I was slacking off and pulled me into the water? That started off a new game that ran till the end of camp, to see who could get the most water on "the Weird Kid". I was probably lucky not to be invited to the campfire by the lake. But if there are any other special moments of my humiliation that you'd like to recall nostalgically, please don't let me interfere. Do you remember the horse-riding incident, when somebody deliberately jabbed my horse so that it threw me and I had to have stitches? That must have been more fun than a barrel full of monkeys. I mean, for anybody who wasn't "the Weird Kid", obviously. At least it gave me an excuse to avoid that watermelon game for a while.'

Amelia flushed again. 'Sorry', she said. She fidgeted some more, and Sonny started to turn his attention back to his book. 'Listen', Amelia blurted, 'what you said? Before? When your friends were here? Were you just making that up?'

'You picked that up, did you? You're right, I'm not a decoy to flush out assassins.'

'No, uh … I meant the other part.'

'You're still hoping that I'm not really gay?'

'I didn't mean that. What I wanted to say was, just because you're gay, that doesn't mean we can't still be friends, right?'

Sonny allowed his shoulders to move up and down slightly. 'Amelia, the obstacle to our being friends is not that I'm gay.'

Amelia smiled. 'Then that's great. Isn't it?'

'Amelia, the obstacle to our being friends is that we're not friends.'

Amelia looked as if she were about to cry. 'But we were always friends at camp!'

'You followed me around all the time, Amelia. Kind of like the way you've been trying to follow me around at this reunion. That kind of thing doesn't make us friends. We were occasional fellow-victims, that's all. Being picked on together doesn't make us friends either. And generally speaking I don't much like people following me around because of what usually happens next. You had plenty of opportunity to observe _that_ pattern at camp.'

'Well there's no need to be mean to _me_ because of it, is there? _I _never picked on you! You just don't like anybody!' Amelia stood up and took herself off to one of the other picnic tables. Sonny watched her as she sat down heavily. She seemed to be nursing hurt feelings. There was nothing he could do about that. He returned to his book.

He was still reading, and Amelia was still off by herself doing whatever it was she was doing, when the hikers returned. In fact, he remained undisturbed—except for a few ex-Grizzlies dropping by his table for a nostalgic jeer at the Weird Kid with his nose stuck in a book, from which Amelia had a fortunate escape—until it was time for lunch. Naturally Skip was Commander-In-Chief of the barbecue grill. He was also chief spruiker for his own culinary achievements. Answering the chef's call, Sonny picked up a plate with a hamburger bun, came up to Skip's cooking station, and transferred a burger from the grill with his fork.

'Hey!' Skip said. 'Do you think you're too _special _to line up with everybody else?'

'You told us to get our Grizzly Burgers', Sonny said accurately.

'Well, you can wait your turn like everybody else.' Skip reached out with his spatula and lifted the burger from Sonny's bun. 'This one's yours, you touched it. I'll let you know when it's ready.' He moved the spatula back in the direction of the grill, but then tilted it so that the burger fell off. 'Whoops! Looks like your burger fell on the ground. I'd better pick it up.' He bent over with the spatula, and as he did so brought his foot down on the fallen burger. 'Oh no! Now your burger's squashed! That's too bad.'

'Yeah', Sonny said, 'I'm going to miss out on your Cordon Bleu cookery.' He turned to walk back to his table and found Amelia again coming to join him.

'I saw that', she said. 'You're not scared of Skip at all, are you? Did you do something to make him mad?'

'That's hard to say, but I don't know that it makes any difference anyway.'

'You might not get any lunch now.'

Sonny sat down and looked at Amelia. She sat down across from him.

'I've still got the bun', Sonny said. 'And even if I didn't, I haven't had to pretend that I like Skip, or that I care what he says or what he thinks. Do you think anybody here likes Skip?'

Amelia slowly shook her head and Sonny continued.

'Well, tomorrow morning he's going to wake up and he's _still _going to be Skip Stevens. And I'm still going to be Sonny Morgendorffer. Would you want to wake up tomorrow and find out that you're Skip Stevens?'

Amelia shook her head again, even more slowly.

'So my advice to you, Amelia, is that you go off somewhere by yourself and start trying to decide who _you _want to be when you wake up tomorrow morning.'

'All right', Amelia said. She stood up and started to leave the table again, but then turned back to Sonny. 'I'm going to line up and get a burger, because I'm hungry. I don't mind sharing with you if you like.'

'I'm still okay with the bun.' Sonny returned with relief to his book, and didn't notice Amelia again until Skip had his unfortunate victims assembled once more so that he could inflict on them some of his favourite memories of Camp Grizzly. As he started to warm up (himself; there was no discernible effect on his audience), Amelia stalked up the stairs to the porch he was standing on, swiped the microphone from him, and asserted her right to speak over his objections, winning some audible support from the audience when she pushed him out of the way. As she spoke, Skip protested again, but the support got louder.

'I'm fed up with doing stupid things that I didn't want to do just because Skip says so. But until now I was frightened to be the only one who challenged him. I didn't want to stand out from the crowd if I could help it. Now that's changed. At this reunion I've renewed my acquaintance with somebody special, a role model, an inspiration.'

_Oh no_, Sonny thought. _Don't say my name. Please don't say my name. _Please _don't say my name._

Amelia said his name.

The audience response died.

Sonny had one instant of unexpected joy at the non-recognition of his name.

'You know', Amelia persisted, 'the Weird Kid.'

The audience came back to life. Somebody giggled with recognition and somebody else stage-whispered, in rhythm, 'The Weird Kid and Amelia'.

Amelia heard, as she was probably intended to. 'I don't care what you think and neither does he. If you want to chant about us K-I-S-S-I-N-G, you can, although it's not going to happen because he's gay. Anyway, who'd want to be involved with him? He's unpleasant, he's anti-social, he doesn't care about anybody else's feelings. But he's not afraid to think for himself and he's not afraid to say what he thinks. And from now on I'm going to be like that too, and I don't care if I end up like Sonny, with no friends.' She paused and looked around the crowd, which was now attentively silent. 'I don't care if I never come back to this stupid campground, either!'

Skip took the microphone back, but Sonny couldn't hear most of what he was saying over the crowd's cheers for Amelia, and for that he was as grateful as one can be for a mixed blessing. Amelia snatched the microphone again to respond to something Skip had apparently said about 'the team'.

'Who do you think wants to be on your team, Skip?' She pulled off her Grizzly T-shirt. 'You can just take this back as far as I'm concerned!'

As Amelia thrust the T-shirt and the microphone at Skip before walking back down the steps off the porch, the cheering rose again and the crowd all began taking off their T-shirts to throw them at Skip. Amid the hubbub Skip seemed to be appealing to Mr Potts for support, but he wasn't getting it. Sonny stopped paying attention anyway, as Amelia, down from the porch, came back towards him.

Sonny stood up for her. 'Good speech', he said.

'Thanks. Um … I hope I didn't hurt your feelings.'

'Why care?'

Amelia stopped to think about this. 'I don't know', she said finally, 'but I do.'

'Well, it takes more than just words to hurt me. Unless they happen to be particularly truthful words strung together in exceptionally observant sentences.'

Another ex-Grizzly came up to them and said, 'Amelia, thanks for telling off that jerk, and Sonny, I guess I never knew you to be such an inspiration.'

As the girl was speaking to Amelia and Sonny, Jane and Trent came up from behind. As she walked off again, both Lanes began teasing Sonny about his secret popularity. He realised they were probably going to tease him all the way back to Lawndale. He could have told them that Amelia was the one with the fan club, but instead he decided to encourage them, by protesting violently and walking off in disgust. It was the least he could do.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Camp Fear' by Jonathan Greenberg<strong>_


	58. Takes A Licking '

**Not So Different**

_**58. 'Takes A Licking …'**_

'Okay … the movie just started and you're in the comfort of your own home. So', Jane's voice continued over the phone line, 'I'd say you're not going to make it. What would you say?'

Sonny looked at his watch. What would he say?

'Crap.'

He didn't want to explain to Jane what he was doing, so he promised to be with her as soon as possible.

On the way down the stairs he passed his father going up.

'Uh … Sonny … uh … your mother said …'

'Dad, I'm sorry, can this wait, I have to meet Jane.'

'Oh! … so … uh, Tom …'

'No Tom tonight, I'm meeting Jane and I'm already late. I'll see you later', he said, and then, as he opened the door to leave, 'have a good evening.'

It was only being flustered and embarrassed about having forgotten to meet Jane that got that last remark out of him. And he felt even guiltier afterwards about the way his lateness had forced Jane to go with him to the movie she referred to as 'It Came From Planet Stupid' instead of the latest Croatian comedy—guilty enough to give in to Jane's demands for a confession about the mysterious unexplained cause of said lateness. He'd been writing a short story which he was thinking of submitting for publication.

Jane was excited and enthusiastic. He hated that. But he was already in the wrong and couldn't complain. He made a token effort to discourage her from taking an interest.

'You're willing to have it published and read by strangers', Jane said, 'but you don't want your best friend to see it?'

'Thank you for understanding.'

In the end, an uneasy conscience about his forgetfulness undermined Sonny's resistance and he let Jane read the story. But after she'd read it, Sonny had difficulty undermining her resistance to telling him what she thought about it, as she too adopted the avoidant tactics that stem from an uneasy conscience. Eventually he dragged a few vague but obviously negative comments out of her. He told her that her reaction didn't matter. By now he hated the story himself.

'Look', said Jane, 'why don't you show it to somebody else? Somebody who appreciates literature.' She crossed her arms. 'Somebody named Tom.'

Sonny didn't buy this. If Jane could discuss the cinema of Croatia intelligently, then she could discuss literature. Ha! Who was he kidding? 'Literature', indeed. A story about a flesh-eating virus! He told Jane that he couldn't show it to Tom because it was too intimate.

'Sonny, it's about a flesh-eating virus. How's that intimate?'

'You'd think it was pretty intimate if it was eating your flesh.'

The trouble was that although Sonny wasn't talking about the story to Jane or to Tom, he couldn't stick to a resolution never to refer to it again. He found himself raising the subject of his writing ability with his father. Luckily it only set the man off on a rant about the lack of qualification of teachers for judging such things, the specific he had in mind emerging as a teacher at his military school who hadn't liked a song Cadet Morgendorffer had written for a school musical. Sonny abandoned his father mid-rant. He _would _be better off letting Tom read the story.

* * *

><p>Tom liked the story.<p>

Sonny had to solicit confirmation.

Tom liked the story. Seriously.

Sonny was so distracted that he was taken by surprise when his bedroom door swung wide and his father came in. 'Oh, uh, hey, Tom! Good to see you! Um …'

'Hi, Mr Morgendorffer.'

'Not that it's not always great to see you, Dad, but did you come in here with any particular purpose in mind?' Insincerely, Sonny continued, 'If it was important I wouldn't want you to forget about it.'

'That's right! Thanks, Sonny. Your mother asked me … your mother asked me to find out whether you want any snacks. She said she could get you some … uh … some …'

'That's okay, Dad, we don't want anything.'

Jake looked to Tom.

'I'm good, thanks, Mr Morgendorffer.'

As his father turned to leave, Sonny said, 'You can remind Mom that nobody's getting pregnant in here. Also, you can give her my guarantee that no infections are being transmitted. But of course I can't ever vouch for what might go on in Quinn's room.'

'What? Quinn? My little girl!'

Over the noise of the ensuing ruckus vibrating down the hallway, Tom asked Sonny whether there was even anybody else _in _Quinn's room.

'I can't ever vouch for what might go on in Quinn's room. Besides, whatever I just did to my parents was only what they deserved and, as for Quinn, I don't see why she shouldn't share the pain. That is, if she's even in her room. She might be out at a Fashion Club meeting. Now that I think of it, that noise might be just Mom and Dad having a full and frank exchange of views about parenting strategies.'

Tom shrugged and looked back at the computer screen. 'You could submit this to _Musings Magazine_. It's much better than the story my English teacher sent them.'

English teacher? Sonny thought of O'Neill and Taylor. 'I know faint praise when I hear it. You're not exactly convincing me that this thing's good enough to be published.'

'That's why you submit it. To find out.'

'I did think about submitting it somewhere. But what about the rejection, indignation, and lasting humiliation?'

'How about the success, stardom, and eventual alcoholism?'

Sonny frowned at Tom. 'Are you trying to motivate me to make an effort?'

'If it works, I'll never tell.' Tom stood up. 'Come on, nobody has to know.'

* * *

><p>'Morgendorffer.' Mr Taylor lingered over the word with the disquieting affection of a stalker, or a supervillain of the more insidious variety. '<em>Musings Magazine<em>?' he read from the mailing address on the envelope Sonny was holding, before Sonny managed to drop it into the slot. 'Are you submitting a story for publication, Morgendorffer? A story that, perhaps, you wrote in time _misappropriated_ from your school obligations? Don't think just because you get … grades of a suitable standard … that even some pathetic magazine editor will attribute literary merit to your subversive outpourings.'

'Thank you, Mr Taylor.' Sonny posted the envelope. 'You've really helped me get this in perspective', he said, with an odd feeling about being so honest.

'High-school children. Delusions of grandeur. I've seen it all, Morgendorffer, and before you were born.'

'And you keep coming back for more. That makes a strong statement about your … character.'

'Cocky', Taylor said. 'I've seen cocky teenagers before.' He moved his face a fraction closer to Sonny's. 'One day you're going to find out where cockiness gets you.' He turned and walked away.

_So long as it doesn't get me a job as a schoolteacher I'm ahead of the game, _Sonny thought.

* * *

><p>For no good reason, Quinn and the rest of the Fashion Club had inadvertently chosen the same time as Sonny to try to break into the world of publication, or at any rate vanity self-publication. They were selling copies of their own 'Fashion Club Forecast' at school. Sonny and Jane were standing in the hallway when Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie came past with the copies they had just bought because Quinn was selling them (both a sufficient and a necessary condition for their action). The actual content was another matter: they were reading out the article titles in puzzlement.<p>

'An Ode To Aubergine?'

'A Good Pluck?'

'Please Remember To Blush?'

Jane said, 'Are there things going on in the boys' room that I don't know about?'

'Do you really want to know everything that goes on in the boys' room?' was Sonny's reply.

Jane changed the subject with a crack about how Quinn could publish Sonny's story. Sonny cracked back that his story would be unsuitable because it was full of sentences that didn't begin with 'I'—and then confessed that he had already submitted it to the magazine Tom had suggested.

'Tom liked your story? That's great.' Jane spread her hands. 'See, what do I know about literature?'

'What does he?'

Jane's hands went back down. 'Was I being enthusiastic again? I'm sorry.'

'You didn't mean anything by it.'

* * *

><p>Tom answered a knock at the door to find Sonny standing there. He kept standing there when Tom invited him inside. Careful scrutiny of his face and posture disclosed (to Tom, anyway) the signs that something was wrong. When Tom asked, Sonny said (still without coming in) that his story had been rejected.<p>

Tom was surprised. It was a good story, surely better than a lot of the stuff that got published in _Musings Magazine_. Still, he had some idea of the unpredictability of the publishing business, and some of the reasons why rejections were something that authors had to get used to, why one rejection didn't prove anything, why the professional thing to do was to keep submitting. He tried to explain some of this to Sonny, but Sonny was doing one of those things he did, the one where he treated people talking to him like a book that he was only skim-reading. He seemed to want to accept the rejection as a definitive affirmation of his negative view of the world. Of course his story wasn't good enough to be published, why dream of behaving as if there were any other possibilities? Tom persevered as best he could in face of this perversity, but Sonny (still not moving from the doorstep) interpreted everything Tom said as an attempt to protract his suffering by getting him to repeat the cycle of submission and rejection indefinitely. He told Tom he was being insensitive.

Tom shook his head. 'No, I'm supportive. But you're too thick-headed to notice. I liked that story, I thought it was smart, funny, and insightful. None of which I could say about you right now.'

'Well, thanks. See ya.' Finally, Sonny moved. In the direction of away.

'Why don't you just grow up?' Tom said to Sonny's departing back. He couldn't tell whether Sonny had heard. 'Or not', he added.

* * *

><p>Quinn and the Fashion Club had been completely humiliated when the latest issue of their favourite fashion magazine had appeared and contradicted everything they'd 'forecast' in their 'newsletter'. Sonny wasn't comfortable with the suspicion that he wasn't being any more adult in his coping than Quinn.<p>

He became even less comfortable when he passed by his parents' room and his father insisted on performing for Sonny the song he'd written for his military school musical. Sonny moved mental baffles into place between his auditory system and his higher brain functions, but too much leaked through and his opinion was written on his face so that even his father could read it. Sonny couldn't honestly reassure him about the quality of the song. His father threw his electronic keyboard to the floor, growling, and then said, 'I'm a failure.'

'Dad, you made up one song when you were a teenager and it's not the best thing ever written. Does that make you a failure?'

'Well, that's one of the things.'

This burst of insight from his father surprised Sonny enough to jolt him into an unaccustomed effort to reciprocate with some of the wisdom of maturity. He pointed out that at least Jake hadn't mistaken crap for something great. He'd done better than that by recognising that he'd fallen short of the high aims he'd set himself. His father was encouraged by this to think of himself positively as having been gutsy enough to take a chance, and set up the keyboard again to have a try at a new song. Sonny reverted to shutting down the input channel, but when his father's composition stalled, he realised that he'd absorbed enough of the metre and the rhyme ('Lexus') to provide a closing line for the lyric: 'Who cares what jerk rejects us?'

'Who cares what jerk rejects us!' Jake echoed. 'Yeah!'

Sonny almost smiled. Well, at least on one side of his face.

Before he could change his mind, he went to the phone to ring Tom and invite him to come over for the delicious meal of crow Sonny was planning for that evening.

'Oh, I'm not hungry', was Tom's reply, 'but I'll watch you eat.'

Sonny figured he deserved that response. Actually he thought he was getting a better reaction from Tom than he deserved. He still felt that way when Tom arrived and made a crack about the smell of the crow cooking, and when Tom came up to his room and then pretended not to know why Sonny had invited him. Sonny admitted he deserved the reaction, and then apologised. 'You were being supportive', he continued. 'I was the one acting like …', he said, and then, his nerve failing him, '… you know.'

'You can do it', Tom said, 'rhymes with "quirk".'

'Wait a minute', Sonny said. He moved to the door and threw it open, revealing his mother behind it.

'Did you want something, Mom? Because I was just about to give Tom a kiss, and we'd like a little privacy. You don't mind if I kiss my boyfriend in private, do you?'

'Of course not, Sonny! I was just wondering whether you and Tom would like a snack.'

'Not right now, obviously. But thank you for thinking of it. We really appreciate it', Sonny said, and then, turning his head, 'don't we, Tom?'

'Yes, thank you, Mrs Morgendorffer, it's very considerate of you.'

'So we'll let you know later if we want anything', Sonny said, and started to close the door.

'Okay, I'll be right here!'

Sonny paused with the door half-closed and raised his eyebrows. 'Right here?'

'Well, not right here outside your door, of course!' Helen gave a tinkle of laughter, half-turned, and took one step away. 'I mean, I'll just be … right …'

'Of course', said Sonny. 'Thanks, Mom.' He shut the door, walked back to Tom, put his hands on Tom's shoulders, and said, 'So, forgiveness and whatnot?'

'You've suffered enough', Tom said. 'For today.'

Sonny gave him a lingering kiss. And another. Then he said, 'I'd like to imagine that tasted better than crow.'

'Hmm', said Tom. 'Let me check.' They kissed again. 'Yes', said Tom, 'even better than your mother's doubtless delicious snacks.'

'The truth is that she doesmind her teenage children kissing in private', Sonny said. 'But she tries her best to be grown-up about it.'

Helen called out to them. 'Sonny, I just thought you should know that we're out of cheese! but there are pretzels if Tom likes them, or pineapple chunks!'

'Thanks for letting us know, Mom!' Sonny called back.

Tom took the conversation back to the original subject, saying that he was glad to see that Sonny was over getting a rejection letter.

'What letter?' Sonny said. 'Oh, wait.' He recited the whole text tonelessly from memory. 'Dear Mr Morgendorffer, Thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work. It's not right for us at this time, but please keep us in mind for future submissions.'

'But Sonny, that's great!' Tom gave him another quick kiss. 'My teacher just got one line regretting that his material was unsuitable. If they said they want you to submit again, they really meant it. Didn't you know that?'

'I thought it was just a form thing.'

'No! The editor must have thought you really had something. They don't often give people that kind of encouragement.'

'Encouragement', said Sonny, not welcoming the word. 'Right. They want me to send them more stories they won't like so that they can reject me again. And this is a good thing.'

'Congratulations.'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Well, in that case—and much as I enjoy the strain you're putting on my mother by being here—I guess I should get back to my writing.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'The Story Of D' by Jacquelyn Reingold<strong>_


	59. Stretching Limits

**Not So Different**

_**59. Stretching Limits**_

Sonny and Jane turned the corner of a school hallway to find Charles 'Upchuck' Ruttheimer bent over at the waist so that he could peer through the keyhole of the principal's office. Just at that moment he straightened up and turned round to face them.

'That's a provocative pose you were adopting there, Upchuck. Almost as if you were proffering yourself.' Sonny widened his eyes for an instant. 'I notice you changed direction and sprang stiffly to attention when you realised I was here. There's a classic pattern of mixed signals, don't you think, Jane?'

'It's funny I never thought of it before, but you're right. We could be looking at somebody in deep denial of his true self. Somebody who's so confused that even the idea of watching Ms Li change her support hose seems somehow to offer hope of resolving his inner conflict.'

To do him justice, Upchuck smoothly changed the subject without attempting to respond in any way to Sonny and Jane's remarks. 'What I was seeing through that keyhole was a cat-and-dogfight that's about to get strike-o-licious.'

Upchuck's prognostications rapidly attracted a small crowd of excited students, and then the teachers emerged led by their union leader, Mr DeMartino, with his bad eye bulging furiously from its socket. Of course it did that all the time, but his general demeanour was not that of somebody at the successful conclusion of negotiations, and the looks and the postures of the teachers who followed him was clearly that of strikers walking off the job, at which the gathered students cheered. The only teacher who could not be read so easily was Mr Taylor, bringing up the rear of the delegation, the unchanged baleful presence of somebody who had gone into a teaching career not despite a contempt for young people but because of it. He gave Sonny a prison-yard stare for a moment as he walked past.

It was a little odd, now that Sonny thought about it, that a recent arrival at the school like Taylor should already have risen in the ranks of the union. Sonny had heard that he had experience as an assistant principal at another school, which he'd had to leave because it closed down as a result of falling student numbers following demographic change. Li had been thrilled to get hold of him to replace O'Neill, but he was still going out on strike against her with the rest.

Meanwhile, Li's voice was coming over the public address system, deflating the celebrating students with the news that school would continue despite the strike. As she spoke, Jane asked Sonny, 'Is that the voice in my head that tells me to kill and kill again?'

'No', Sonny answered mechanically, 'Satan's voice is lower and he has an English accent.' But he was thinking. What kind of substitutes would Li be able to find to cover for the whole faculty?

The recollection of Mrs Stoller, engaged by Li as a substitute to fill in for Barch after her removal, did not inspire confidence.

* * *

><p>The appearance of Stoller in front of one of Sonny's classes, substituting for DeMartino, did not inspire confidence.<p>

The passage of the years had made it impossible for even Stoller still to mistake Sonny for a girl, but he still triggered something in whatever it was she used instead of a functioning memory.

'You're not Sally', she said, peering at Sonny like a bipedal surface-dwelling muzzle-less mole.

Sonny kept his mouth firmly shut.

Kevin Thompson had never had that much sense.

'Hey, Sally's a girl's name! She's mixing you up with a girl!' He turned his goofy grin from Sonny to Stoller. 'He's not a girl, even if he is …'

Stoller cut him off. 'Cubie, you hush! And posture, Cubie, posture!' (She had remembered Kevin and what she called him.) She turned back to Sonny. 'You do look like Sally. Is she your sister?'

'My sister's name is Quinn, and she looks nothing like me', Sonny responded truthfully. 'She has long red hair. And lip gloss. Also some sort of disturbingly bright and cheerful design on her clothes.'

'Oh, she sounds so sweet', said Stoller inaccurately. Sonny flicked his gaze sideways to Jane for a moment. With Stoller's scrutiny fixed on Sonny, she was taking the opportunity to roll her eyes and pretend to gag. 'What's your name, then, dear?' Stoller continued.

Although she gave no sign of conscious recognition, Stoller had the same reaction to 'Sunny' as on the previous occasion: she thought it sounded like a hippie name. This time her chosen 'nicer sounding' substitute designation for Sonny was 'Simon'.

* * *

><p>When Quinn started ranting to their mother about the substitute who was taking her Language Arts class, Sonny did not tune out to quite the extent he normally would have. Sonny wasn't sure whether each substitute would take over the existing class schedule of one regular member of the faculty. He figured he might learn something about a teacher he might end up with himself (one who was writing a 'stupid novel', Sonny noted). Their mother, just as used to Quinn's frothy outpourings as Sonny, was listening even less, giving only the occasional grunted 'Mm-hmm' of simulated attention which was more than enough to keep Quinn going. It didn't seem to register with her when Quinn cited the substitute's use of the phrase 'budding child-woman', but Sonny's half-tuned ear picked it out of the torrent. His mind ticked over faster. It wasn't a challenge to the intellect to guess what sort of person might use an expression like that. (Where <em>was <em>Li finding these substitutes?) He lowered his book and focussed more on Quinn's words.

'… started acting out his stupid book for us, stroking Tiffany's hair and telling her about his anguished soul …'

Sonny got up, walked to the cordless phone, and lifted the receiver from its cradle to take it back towards the table.

'Mm-hmm …', his mother said again, and then, with a start, '… what? He was stroking Tiffany's hair?'

Sonny took up position behind her shoulder.

'I know!' Quinn said. 'Like Tiffany would ever date somebody who wore a tweed jacket.'

'Sonny!' their mother exclaimed, and then as she turned her head towards him, 'Get me the …', before she realised he was already proffering the phone receiver.

* * *

><p>Mrs Stoller roused from sleep when the principal's voice came over the public address system peremptorily summoning 'Mr Jacob Morgendorffer, Junior' to her office, 'Now!'<p>

When Sonny stood up, Stoller asked, 'Simon? Where are you going?'

'To get Jacob', Sonny said as he left the room.

When he reached the principal's office, he found that his mother's promptitude in ringing a loud alarm in Li's ear had been matched by Li's promptitude in getting rid of Mr 'call-me-Ken' Edwards, Quinn's substitute Language Arts teacher. More to the depressing point, Li had continued with equal promptitude to find another way of filling the resulting vacancy …

'If somebody asked _me _to teach a class, I'd be honoured', she said to Sonny implausibly (wasn't getting promoted to principal a way to avoid having to teach classes?). 'Besides, we wouldn't be in this fix if it weren't for your mother.'

'You mean, because she took swift action to remove the threat of a damaging lawsuit? You … I mean, the school … wouldn't want to run that risk, surely?'

Ms Li muttered something that sounded like 'cost me my very pants'.

'Other people would have noticed the same liabilities eventually. Really you're lucky that my mother is a top-notch lawyer and spotted the problem first and responded at once. She knows a lot about the danger of lawsuits. For example, she knows a lot about civil rights lawsuits for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation', Sonny exaggerated. 'But you wouldn't have to worry about something like that, would you? The fact that you're offering me this chance to replace Mr Edwards confirms the school's policies combine rigorous avoidance of inappropriate touching with guarantees against any sort of discrimination. I mean, that's what it would signify if I accepted your offer. There might be different consequences if you withdrew it, of course, but why would you do that?'

'Why indeed, Mr Morgendorffer?' Li gritted her teeth. 'How few schools would have available a student of your … qualities.'

'I notice that this official school policy has not been set out in writing and promulgated. No doubt you've been too busy because of all the negotiations with the teachers' union. Luckily I'll be able to take over the responsibility of preparing the written version as a voluntary addition to my teaching workload. I'll have it on your desk tomorrow ready for the official announcement. And now I suppose you'll want to take me to be introduced to my class?'

Enjoyable though it was seeing Li squirm, Sonny did feel slight misgivings of his own at becoming a strikebreaker. He quelled them with the reflection that it wouldn't take much experience of his presence in the faculty lounge to make the principal desperate to settle with the union on any terms.

Besides, he had to think about the effect on Quinn.

* * *

><p>The next morning, as Sonny came downstairs for breakfast, he could hear from the kitchen the dulcet tones of Quinn's plaint to their mother. He walked into the room, where their father was spouting some random irrelevance, and said, 'Morning, Mom; Dad …', and then, turning to Quinn, '… <em>class<em>.'

Quinn addressed another cry of protest to their mother and then in desperation left the room.

'What's wrong with her?' Helen said.

'Nothing …', Sonny said lingeringly, '… yet.' He thought about this. 'Well', he amended, 'nothing new yet.' Life was too short for a full answer to his mother's question. Besides, she should know what was wrong with Quinn already, and if she didn't, it was far too late to explain.

She tried to take a warning tone with him, but Sonny had no difficulty maintaining a demeanour that gave her no purchase while he asked her in a reasonable manner whether she wanted him to discharge his new 'responsibilities' as anything less than a conscientious educator. The sporadic interruptions of his father's babblings, whatever they were about, prevented her from taking Sonny further to task.

* * *

><p>Trent greeted Jane and Sonny and they returned the greetings. Then Jane asked him what he was doing there.<p>

'Wasn't I supposed to pick you up or something?'

'Well, that's why I set your clock ahead four hours … but maybe I overdid it? We've just arrived for the _start_ of the school day.' Jane shrugged. 'Why don't you go back to your car to catch up on your nap deficit, and you'll be nicely refreshed when it's time to take us home?'

'Sure, whatever.'

Sonny and Jane had paused when they saw Trent approaching, but now they started walking towards the school again, although with no great eagerness, until Ms Defoe broke from the picket line to come towards them.

'Jane, thank God. We need your taste and talent.'

Before they could find out what she was talking about, Ms Onepu joined the group.

'Oh! Jane! Sonny! I do hope you understand what we're doing! Of course it's terribly difficult for us to strike, and deprive you and your fellow-students of potential educational opportunities. But we do have to consider the long-term interests not just of yourselves but of the generations of children who will follow you through this school. Without adequate pay and conditions, the school can't hope to attract the best teachers or to encourage them to give to their utmost, so in the end the children suffer more. And Sonny! I hear that you're actually taking over some teaching duties. Well, I say duties, but that's not exactly right, is it? But I know you'll devote yourself to the welfare of whichever class you're assigned to, so really it's a beneficial opportunity that's opened up for them and for you. Still, I do hope that Principal Li will see reason and allow more normal arrangements to be restored as soon as possible. A just settlement of the strike is so important, I'm sure everybody can agree on that much …'

Defoe interposed to hint that it was with precisely that in mind that she had hoped to speak with Jane, and Onepu, slightly chastened, returned to her fellow-picketers. Defoe explained that she thought it might help the strikers if they had more graphically effective picket signs to get their message across, and she hoped Jane might be able to help with that. 'I'll write a note to get you out of class', she said, then gave an uncharacteristic frown. 'Oh, wait, I guess I can't.'

'No', said Jane, 'but the scab can.' She jerked a thumb at Sonny.

'Gee, thanks, Mr Hoffa', Sonny said, rummaging through his backpack. 'This is for Stoller, right?' he continued as he pulled out pen and paper.

Jane confirmed that it was.

_Please excuse Jane from class_, Sonny wrote. _Signed, Mr Simon._ Jane would get more education out here working with the strikers than she'd get from Stoller, that was for sure.

'Morgendorffer', Mr Taylor said, taking them all unawares. 'Already abusing your temporary position of influence, I see.' He moved off again before any of them could respond.

Sonny gave the note to Jane and they went into the school building together and then separated. Jane went to hand Sonny's note to Stoller before returning to help Defoe. Sonny headed to _his _class (and this time it really was _his _class) to take up his teaching duties, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

The first problem there was establishing what text Mr Taylor had assigned. Sonny's flesh crawled at the idea of actually asking Taylor, but the students had only hazy recollections. It took all the available class time to piece them together and identify _Romeo and Juliet_. The bell rang and Sonny had to go to his locker, where he encountered Jane and told her about his experience so far.

'A classroom full of blank faces is a little spooky, until you plant your feet and stare them down.'

'You know, apes interpret that as a gesture of dominance.'

'That's what I just said.'

At that point they were approached by some of the apes from their own grade. They'd seen Jane use the note from Sonny to get out of class, and were hoping he might do the same sort of favour for them. This business of abusing a position of influence wasn't going to be a bowl of cherries unalloyed.

* * *

><p>Jane was back constructively encouraging some of the picketers as they painted new signs, advising them that 'nothing says "death to the bosses!" like primaries. Pastels are for appeaseniks.'<p>

'Still avoiding classes, Lane?' That was Taylor, of course, at her shoulder without warning.

'I still have a note.'

'From the strikebreaker? That's not my concern, is it … for the moment?' Taylor flexed his neck muscles, turning his head from side to side, looking towards the school building and then back to Jane. 'The principal can't expect professional maintenance of discipline without taking the proper steps for the employment of professional staff.'

Jane was saved from having to deal with Taylor when Mrs Bennett came out of the building to tell the other teachers about the principal's 'final offer'. It looked as if most of them were ready to accept it, but DeMartino scoffed. Then he pulled some papers out of his pocket and waved them around, shouting, 'This is the contract we wrote, and this is the contract she's going to sign! Cover me, boys. I'm going in!'

As DeMartino marched inside, Jane raised her head elaborately to scan the sky.

'What are you looking for, Lane?'

'Bombers. He'll never make it without air support.'

* * *

><p>Sonny had reached the most distasteful part of his teacherly duties: the testing. They'd finished studying <em>Romeo and Juliet<em>, and his orders from above about what came next were clear. He couldn't say whether he or the students liked it less. Personally, he was happy for the students to cheat, but they'd only be able to copy off each other, which seemed unlikely to help.

Now he was trying to get Tom to help him in a brainstorming session to come up with test questions, but Tom was only unhelpfully suggesting smart-aleck trick questions, so at least when Quinn burst into the room she wasn't interrupting anything useful.

'Sonny, you know the test tomorrow? It's going to be easy, right? Because if you make it really hard, some popular people won't like it and might take it out on another completely innocent popular person, and besides, it's good to help the popular, because if you don't, it might make you even more unpopular, although I don't know if such a thing is possible.'

'Interesting question', Sonny said. 'More unpopular? Nobody's ever made a conscious attempt to murder me, but that doesn't mean they haven't felt like it. They might just be afraid of the law.'

'So you'll do it?'

'Right after I oil up and get into my posing pouch.' Sonny noticed Tom grinning, but Quinn ignored the joke and protested violently at Sonny's unwillingness to accommodate her. Now Sonny was irked.

'You know, I didn't ask for this stupid teaching job. I don't need the work and I don't need the stigma.' He also didn't need to explain to Quinn why he'd taken it nonetheless. 'I've tried to make the class interesting and focus on the play, not the grades. And if, after all that, the only thing your vapid friends can think about is how to finesse taking the test, then they deserve to fail.'

'Sonny, do you want everybody to hate you?'

'Do you think there'd be a difference?'

Quinn clenched her fists. 'You know my friends don't hate you. But you might be about to change the way they feel.'

Sonny faced his sister down. 'So you're just looking out for me, are you? You know I can look out for myself. And as for your friends, why should yougo out of your way to protect the stupid? You're not one of them.'

'I … I …'. Quinn shifted as if she were about to stamp her foot. 'You don't understand anything!' She stormed out of the room.

When she was gone, Tom suggested that maybe Sonny should make the test easy.

Sonny gave him an appraising look and said, 'I don't even own a posing pouch.'

'_Damn!_'

* * *

><p>Jane was back with the picketers, to see how the new signs were working out, when Onepu noticed that DeMartino still hadn't returned from his confrontation with Li.<p>

'With those two in a negotiations lock-up, anything could have happened', Taylor said. 'It's time somebody reliable took a hand.' He moved towards the building entrance.

'Oh dear!' said Onepu. 'I do think it would be a good idea if we had a neutral witness to whatever we find! Jane, would you mind coming with us?'

This was a sight Jane didn't want to miss. She followed Taylor and Onepu into the school and then into the principal's office, and was rewarded by the dramatic spectacle of Li and DeMartino slumped inert over opposite sides of the desk, in a room where half of every available surface, including the floor, was littered with packaging and half-eaten remains from every kind of take-out food delivery available in the Lawndale area.

'Oh no!' Onepu exclaimed. She turned to Jane protectively, and spoke in a frantic whisper. 'This is terrible! They've killed each other! Jane, you shouldn't have to see this! I shouldn't have brought you here!'

But even as she spoke, although she was trying to block Jane's view, Jane could see Taylor taking a small mirror from a pocket, wiping it, and then holding it in front of DeMartino's mouth, and Jane could even see the mist on it when Taylor raised it to his eyes. He wiped it again and repeated the test with Li, with the same result.

Jane wished Sonny could have been there to watch. She photographed the scene with her mind's eye for a future painting.

'They're not dead', Taylor said contemptuously, with a scornful look at Onepu, and at that instant Li roused and started muttering about her dream. Then she woke fully, and then so did DeMartino. For a moment Li was relieved and DeMartino distraught that they had only dreamed signing the contract, but after another moment Taylor took the signed document from the hand DeMartino was still unconsciously clutching it in.

'We have a contract!' Onepu said. 'The strike is over! We can go back to teaching the children! Anthony, you did it!'

But DeMartino and Li had both collapsed again.

* * *

><p>After the strike had been settled, Sonny heard about the results of the test Mrs Stoller had set for his class while he'd been otherwise occupied. Stoller had been impressed by the number of As: she said the class were the smartest and biggest first-graders she'd ever taught. Even Brittany, with only two out of the three colours on the US flag correct, was officially recognised for another C-student performance.<p>

Kevin flunked, but what really gravelled him was not getting a gold star like Brittany's.

But Sonny only heard about this later. In the meantime, he had already tested his own class, graded the papers, and handed them back. He'd decided on a single essay question (minimum word limit—200): 'What is _Romeo and Juliet _about?'

One of Quinn's most persistent admirers—Joey, Jamie, or Jeffy—the one with the red hair, anyway—was thrilled with his 'B'. He took it as a sign that Sonny agreed with his theory that Mercutio 'had a thing for' Romeo.

'No', Sonny said, 'but you argued your point well, and I thought your ideas for keeping him out of the locker room were original, if a little closed-minded.'

This last point had been crucial. Sonny would have had no time for a student who was trying to curry favour with a gay 'teacher' by seeing gay angles everywhere (or, still worse, trying to win 'favours' from that same 'teacher'—if Jeffy, Joey, or Jamie wanted help coming out, he'd have to get it from somebody else). But the reflexive prejudice in the second part of the essay suggested that a degree of flakiness was the more likely explanation: too much flakiness to get an 'A', but plenty enough for a 'B'. Unless it was a deviously manipulative double-bluff, in which case a 'B' was still the right grade.

Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany, on the other hand, had adopted the exact 'copy off each other' strategy that Sonny had foreseen leading to disaster. When they saw their 'D-minus' results, Stacy at least had the grace to acknowledge that the choice had been an error. They'd only escaped flunking because Sonny had given them extra credit for realising the connection between the movie and the play. He'd still marked them down for failing to recognise that in Shakespeare's version, Romeo never went by the name 'Leonardo' and never took a swim in his clothes.

Sandi's vexation at Quinn over the test was increased when she saw that Quinn had received a 'B-plus'. She started dropping heavy hints about Quinn's 'relationship' with the teacher and about everything being 'relative'.

Quinn, in response, did not let the growing attention of the whole class deter her from defending the way Sonny had tried to make the best of a bad situation, nor was she deterred by Sandi's intensified hinting about the almost _sisterly _way she was taking sides with him. Instead, much to Sonny's interest, she responded by proving herself his true sister with a subtler and deadlier veiled threat. Indeed, she'd got hold of a piece of kryptonite. Although with tactical precision Quinn did not name any of the players, anybody who knew the little monster Griffins would recognise them in the story, and it would have been just like them to pass on pictures of fifth-grade Sandi wearing huge braces 'to a friend, who hasn't shown them to anybody out of the goodness of her heart … _yet._'

Sandi had the wit to be cowed, but Quinn wasn't finished. 'Besides, why shouldn't I act sisterly towards him?' She turned to look at Sonny. 'After all … I'm his sister.'

At what seemed to be the sight of a new opening, Sandi revived. She leaned forward to Stacy and Tiffany and said, 'Did you hear that? Oh my gosh! Quinn just admitted that weirdo is her brother!'

Stacy leaned comfortably over the back of her chair and gave Sandi an eyebrow flash. 'Well, um, of course he is, Sandi. We knew that.'

Tiffany chimed in with support. 'We were just being polite about it.'

_My work here is done_, Sonny thought. _My little sister is all grown up, and the Fashion Club, know it or not, is doomed. _He allowed both corners of his mouth to turn slightly upward.

It was at that dramatically appropriate moment that Ms Li's dazed voice came over the public address system to make a disjointed announcement in which the one thing clear was that the teachers would return to work the next day.

The redheaded boy raised his hand to tell Sonny that he thought he'd been a pretty good teacher. He had nothing to curry favour for any more. Maybe in his confused way he wasn't really homophobic.

'Thanks, Jamie, Jeffy, or Joey', Sonny said. 'For the record, some of you aren't half-bad students. You know who you are.'

He could see Quinn was smiling. Well, he could live with that. It wasn't the sort of day that came round very often.

He got confirmation of that in the evening, when Quinn came into his room, feeling uncomfortable again because Sandi had repeated, and made direct, her accusation about how Quinn had got her B-plus from Sonny. Sonny asked her to consider how he could live with himself if he displayed generosity to her by giving her an unearned grade. Immediately grasping his logic buoyed up Quinn's spirits, and she reciprocated by telling him that she could no more be nice to him. He confirmed his full understanding of this remark.

'God only knows what this little foray of yours into teacher geekland cost me in social status', said Quinn.

'I feel your pain', Sonny lied.

'Well. Good night then.'

'Good night', Sonny said, and then, as Quinn turned and started to leave the room, '… _sis_.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Lucky Strike' by Peter Elwell<strong>_


	60. False Impressions

**Not So Different**

_**60. False Impressions**_

Stacy looked up and down the hallway as she approached Sonny, verifying that they were alone and unobserved, something he had satisfied himself of more promptly with the benefit of more experienced technique.

Why would Stacy be coming towards him, since it wouldn't be to beat him up?

'Um … Sonny—'

Sonny just nodded.

'I was wondering—can I ask you something?'

Sonny didn't even nod. He just waited.

'Um … well, do you remember when they had that "Art In The Park"?'

Sonny remembered 'Art In The Park'. That had been the real beginning of Jane's latest art adventure. But there had been a prologue …

* * *

><p>Sonny had gone round to the Lanes' to witness Jane filming a music video for Mystik Spiral. The project had been derailed when the fog machine exploded, triggering the collapse of the gazebo they'd been using as a set. Trent, Jane, and Sonny had gone back into the house (the rest of the band had gone off together, allegedly traumatised) and Sonny and Jane had been looking out the kitchen window at the ruins when a tall, vague, blond man had come into the room. He'd greeted Trent and Jane, with hugs, and then come to a puzzled halt in front of Sonny. From the apparent intimacy of his acquaintance with Lane siblings, Sonny had deduced he must be one, presumably Wind, since that was the only other brother—which could also be why Wind (if that's who it was) had been puzzled by Sonny's own presence. Sonny had experienced a horrible feeling that Wind was about to mistake him, by default, for Summer or Penny, and had decided to give him another option.<p>

'I'm Twinkle. But you can call me "Twink".'

'Hey, Wind', Trent had said, confirming Sonny's guess and breaking up the awkwardness, and then Jane had asked Wind what he was doing there. Wind's latest wife had, it emerged, locked him out of the kitchen, and Wind had taken advice from somebody or something called a 'life consultant' not to interfere. So he'd returned to the family home to get something to eat. He'd been diverted from that goal, however, by horror at the destruction of the gazebo where, or so he had told them, the Lane parents took their children at birth to decide names. He'd wanted it fixed.

'Um … Wind', Jane had said, 'I don't know how to break this to you, but I don't think Mommy and Daddy will be bringing us home any new brothers or sisters.'

'What about Twink?' Wind had said, flinging out an arm in Sonny's direction.

'It's been quite a while now since I was born. Jane's right.'

'No!' Wind had been ready to collapse into tears at the loss of the 'Naming Gazebo', and insistent on its restoration. To raise the necessary funds (the Lane parents being once again out of the country for artistic purposes)—and because, she said, she liked the idea of 'the harvest of my inner torment on display right next to the falafel cart'—Jane had adopted Trent's suggestion of selling some of her paintings at 'Art In The Park'.

* * *

><p>Mailbox decorations, T-shirts with the faces of dogs, mice made out of clam-shells, caricatures drawn in five minutes, children's fashion, pinwheels, weeping clowns—'Well, we are in the park, but I'm failing to see the art portion' had been Sonny's remark to Tom as they strolled through. When Jane had hailed them from the booth where she'd been displaying her paintings, Sonny had said, 'One of these things is not like the others.'<p>

Jane hadn't managed to sell anything before their arrival. It hadn't helped that the first thing everybody noticed when they came up was the fact that Jane had chosen to hang upside down her centrepiece, a copy of _The Starry Night_. Even Jane's biggest fan, Ms Defoe, had said the same thing. Sonny and Tom had hung around the booth to create an appearance of interest and activity. Despite that, or just as likely because of that, Jane had managed only one sale, to Ms Onepu, who'd come by with Mr DeMartino. She'd explained that with the extra income she now had thanks to the 'brilliant leadership' of 'Anthony', she could afford to give the material encouragement that an exceptional student like Jane deserved. 'Oh, and I hope you don't mind my mentioning it—but I'm sure you'd want to know—you're so dedicated to your art—you've accidentally hung the Van Gogh copy upside down.'

'No, I painted it upside down. I hung it right side up.'

There had been five painful minutes of Onepu's apologies before DeMartino, surreptitiously signalled by Sonny, had managed to get her out of there. But the really important sale, the one that led to all the subsequent developments, had been heralded by the next onlooker's words.

'Hey, did you paint this?'

'I know, I know, it's upside down.'

'Of course it is. Hanging a famous masterpiece upside down allows the viewer to see its beauty totally independent of its content. I love it.'

The man had turned out to be a gallery owner who hired artists to paint copies of Old Masters. He hadn't just wanted to buy one of Jane's works, he had made a deal to sell as many Van Goghs as she could paint, taking 'only' a sixty percent commission.

Sonny had been able to understand Jane's wanting the money, even forty percent of it. Money had been the point of the whole 'Art In The Park' enterprise in the first place. And it had been nice when Jane had paid for pizza and the slices had two toppings. But then she'd accumulated sufficient earnings to pay for the gazebo reconstruction. Her first instinct had been to tender her resignation but Gary, the gallery owner, had persuaded her to withdraw it by the offer of an increase in her cut to sixty percent. She said she could use the money to finance her own work. But she wasn't painting her own work, even in art class.

So Sonny remembered 'Art In The Park', and he told Stacy so, which gave her enough confidence to continue.

'There was this guy there drawing caricatures'—Sonny noticed that Stacy did not stumble over the word—'and the four of us, I mean the Fashion Club, decided we'd get a group portrait done. But when it was finished it was … I mean, it wasn't … exactly what … everybody expected. So we held a meeting and the Club voted that we'd been slandered by the way the picture had been drawn, because it looked bad, and that we needed to do something for justice against the guy, I mean the one who drew it. So Quinn and Sandi talked to your Mom, because she's a lawyer, but she kept telling them there wasn't anything that could be done legally. Now Tiffany's started saying we should ask her to help us find somebody to break his fingers, like in that show about those guys. But …'

When Stacy paused, Sonny prompted her by repeating her last word interrogatively.

Stacy looked down at her shoes. 'I know maybe the way the drawing made Sandi and Quinn and Tiffany look was a bit mean, but I think I looked really pretty in it and I liked it. So—I kept it, and I've hidden it, and none of the others know, but I want to keep it because I like it and I don't want them to find out and I don't really want anything to happen to the guy either, although I don't want the others to know that. But if your Mom can't help them, then maybe Sandi or Quinn will think of asking you for help because everybody knows how good you are at thinking up plans for getting the better of people'—Stacy was on the verge of hyperventilating now—'and I was worried about what kind of plan you might come up with and what kind of things you might find out and—'

Sonny held up a hand to check her. 'Does Quinn look really bad in this picture?'

'Well—um—I guess so—I mean, I don't know—_Quinn_ said it made her face look like one big freckle and—'

Sonny held up his hand again. 'Your secret and your picture are safe from me. On condition I get the chance to look at it some time.'

Stacy nodded breathlessly.

* * *

><p>Dealing with Stacy's worries had been easy enough for Sonny. Dealing with Jane's, not so much so. She'd dreamed up a theory, which she started expounding to Sonny as they went for a walk, that Gary was selling her copies as the originals, making millions selling counterfeits.<p>

Sonny said, 'To finance his secret robot army, no doubt.'

'I'm serious. We're going to head over there right now and enact a sting operation.'

'A sting operation? He knows who we are, how do you figure we're going to be able to pull off a sting?'

'We'll think of something.'

Sonny looked at Jane quizzically. 'You don't know what a sting operation is, do you?'

'Don't try any of your rhetorical gymnastics on me, Morgendorffer. Do you want to help me expose Gary or don't you?'

Sonny permitted himself the luxury of a sigh. 'Listen, the way a sting operation would work would be if we got somebody to go into the gallery, like an undercover cop, and express an interest in a Van Gogh, or some other Old Master. Then, if Gary commissioned you to paint the thing the undercover agent asked for, we'd wait until Gary delivered it for payment as the genuine article and then bust him. Now do you see? It's not going to work if I go in there and it's absolutely not going to work if you do.'

'Then you'll just have to come up with some other plan for us, aren't you? It's what you do.'

Sonny added an eye roll to a sigh. 'Fine, but you have to wear the moustache.'

Jane looked at him quizzically. 'And what's the logic behind that?'

'I'm the one who's going to have to put up with taking care of facial hair or shaving it off for the rest of my life. This is your turn. Besides, my smaller size better fits me to the other role of hiding in the ceiling vent.'

This conversation had carried them as far as Gary's gallery, Gary's Gallery. (Did that name suggest a man with the imagination to run a counterfeiting ring?)

'Well, I've got a plan', said Jane. 'I'll grab Gary's invoice book from behind the counter to see who bought my last painting. All you have to do is distract him.'

'And just how am I supposed to do that, Mr Phelps?'

'Hey, _you're _the one who _dreams _plots for _Mission: Impossible_. You'll think of something.' She opened the door and they went in.

Gary greeted Jane and inquired after the painting she was working on for him. Jane introduced Sonny as a friend interested in 'art recreations'.

'Um, yes', Sonny said. 'I am very interested in art recreations.' _Could this sound any more as if came out of a can? _he thought. Luckily, Gary turned out to be devoted enough to the subject to be drawn into an exposition by the most unconvincing pretence of interest. He showed Sonny around, discoursing freely, until Jane, presumably having obtained what she wanted from the invoice book, came up to them and interrupted Gary to tell him that she and Sonny needed to leave.

'Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you', Gary said. 'Can you do O'Keeffe? The guy who bought your last painting, Steve Taylor, wants one for his wife's birthday.'

'Steve Taylor?' said Sonny, with a significant look at Jane as Brittany's father was named, and softly hummed a little of the _Mission: Impossible _theme to underline the point.

'Steve Taylor bought my last painting?' said Jane.

'He's a regular customer', Gary said. 'Do you know him?'

After that, of course, nothing would satisfy Jane short of an investigatory visit to the Taylors'. Sonny excused himself from accompanying her. He had visions of Kevin Thompson asking him 'If you're so gay, why are you hanging around Britt's place?' and the prospect bored and depressed him, as the prospect of any interaction with Kevin did. He agreed to meet Jane afterwards for a debrief.

When Sonny did meet Jane, she was the one who seemed depressed.

'You would have enjoyed the anti-climax', she said.

'Well, go on, share with me.'

'The first joke was when Brittany answered the door. She was comfortable enough with having me there once she found out that I wasn't expecting to hang out with her. She even started telling me about her dad's art collection, most of which seemed to be either about or made from dead animals.'

Sonny nodded. 'I've been in that house, remember.'

Jane nodded back. 'Well, after that she showed me the Van Gogh copy that I painted, but she thought it was an original. Then her father came in and laughed at the idea. He knows he could never afford an original Van Gogh.' Her shoulders slumped. 'He told me he found a great gallery that's got a bunch of "hacks" churning out copies. He even told me they were "decent" for the price, and then he showed me one spot where the brushwork was kind of lazy.' She heaved a huge sigh. 'Even a cheeseball like Mr Taylor could tell I'm a hack.'

'Coming from a guy whose home is decorated in early petting zoo? I wouldn't worry about it.'

Jane wasn't comforted, and Sonny's next effort, pointing out that with the number of copies she'd been doing for Gary they couldn't all be her best work, didn't help either. She admitted that the copying work had given her creative block, which she'd never had before.

'Your creativity has been channelled into other areas, like inventing paranoid delusions centred around non-existent art counterfeiting rings.'

'Yeah, my ego couldn't take just being a hack. I had to be a super-hack. Or maybe I just wanted Gary to be a con-man so I could quit without remorse.'

'Sure, because it's not like you'll have any remorse if you stay.'

Sonny was rewarded by the signs of spirit returning to Jane's face.

'Look, I got into this in the first place to get that damn gazebo rebuilt. Those slouches of workmen Trent found have been lollygagging around while I've nearly gone nuts. Trent's supposed to be supervising them—'

'Trent?'

'—right, my mistake. So if he can't provide supervision, he can provide labour, but that gazebo's going to be finished today. And once I've taken care of that, I'll go tell Gary I'm quitting for good.'

Sonny was relieved. 'Good. Mind if I drop by your place later on to see the finished product?'

'Sure', said Jane. 'And thanks for helping me sort this out.'

'Me?' said Sonny. 'I didn't even hide in a ceiling vent.'

On that amicable note they parted. When Sonny showed up at the Lanes', the new gazebo was finished, Jane had Gary's gracious acceptance of her resignation to report (he'd told her she could come back any time), and Trent was groaning after unaccustomed effort, too sore to play his guitar.

'You know', Jane said, 'maybe I will do a painting of the gazebo. I can call it _Descent Into Madness_.'

Sonny said, 'Or _Gazebo_.'

A moment later the Lane parents walked into the yard, back from their latest expedition in search of artistic inspiration, and noticed three people sitting around the gazebo. That set them to reminiscing about it—not knowing, naturally, that it was only a replacement for the one they remembered. Their reminiscences were different from Wind's. They'd only invented the story about its being a 'Naming Gazebo' because they wanted him to appreciate the name they'd given him and abandon his idea of changing it to 'Ronald'. Really they regarded it as the sort of ugly thing fit only for country-house phonies. In fact, their suggestion was to get some axes and tear it down as soon as possible.

'Twinkle', Jane said, 'I'm going to kill your big brother.'

Jane's parents looked at each other, puzzled. They wanted to know who 'Twinkle' was.

Sonny said, 'It's a gazebo name.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Fizz Ed' by Glenn Eichler and 'Art Burn' by Dan Vebber<strong>_


	61. Rivals For Attention

**Not So Different**

_**61. Rivals For Attention**_

The damage began with Helen talking seriously to Quinn. Sonny knew not to expect any good to come of that.

That his mother should hope for effect from talking seriously to Quinn didn't exactly surprise him. He could think of a few possible explanations for her to behave that way, and all of them bored and depressed him.

That Quinn should choose this occasion to break pattern by taking what their mother said seriously—well, he could think of a few explanations for that, too, when he eventually found out about it, but all of them scared him.

The trigger had been Sonny's receipt of a present from Tom, a first edition, something whose significance was alien to Quinn. In an act of cruelty to both her children, their mother had explained that it was a sign of maturity to find one person you wanted to date exclusively, somebody caring and compatible who knew and cared how to find you a present that was important to you.

'You know, Sonny', she had continued, 'Dad and I really haven't had the chance to really get to know Tom.' Sonny heard the footsteps of doom. 'Why don't you invite him over for dinner?'

For form's sake, Sonny had replied. 'Because I haven't taken complete leave of my senses.'

Sonny had not gone on to say that this was the second-worst idea he'd ever heard in his life, ranking right after the one about his parents bringing home a little sister for him from the hospital. Actively trying to discourage his mother was, he knew, a marginal strategy at best. What he had working in his favour was that she would surely rely on him to pass on the invitation and make the arrangements with Tom, which should give him a fair chance of stalling until his preferred night for having Tom round for dinner—the one after Armageddon. Well, any night after Armageddon would do: he wouldn't want to be unreasonably picky.

He told Jane as they walked to school. She understood, or at least partly. She knew all about the way Sonny's father carried on, but her first thought was about how that might embarrass Sonny. Sonny had to clarify for her.

'It's more that he'll provide Tom with a festive night of subtle mockery. My dad deserves better than that.' Sonny's eyes slid off to one side. 'Sort of.'

'Well, I don't think you're giving Tom enough credit. He never once said an unkind word to my parents.'

'He never met your parents.'

'Oh, yeah.' Jane gave Sonny a quizzical look. 'I don't suppose you could get _your_ father to go off to Greece for six months to sketch the sunset', she said with unhelpful accuracy.

What Sonny had not mentioned to Jane was Quinn's request to be allowed to invite a boyfriend to dinner if Sonny was. Sonny had assumed that their mother's limitation, to steady boyfriends only, would rule that out. The frightening news that Quinn was seriously preparing to select a steady boyfriend leaked back to him through Stacy, after Quinn made a formal announcement to an 'emergency' meeting of the Fashion Club. Sandi had fully supported her, the real reason (the one she didn't tell Quinn, but shared with Tiffany and Stacy) being 'there'll be more guys for the rest of us'. The whole Club had helped Quinn pick her way through the delicate selection process for the one perfect 'Mr Right': height, hair, skin, popularity, bone structure, colour sense, car, wardrobe, musculature, luxury possessions, ability to service Quinn's diverse needs … (Sonny's contribution to the list of criteria, when he heard Quinn talking about it, had been 'ability to fix major appliances', and Quinn had immediately accepted it.) Eventually Quinn held screening interviews at the pizzeria where Sonny and Jane were eating, and they were able to observe her rejecting virtually every boy at the school for failing to meet her exacting standards in one respect or another. (She did it in jig time, too. 'If I were stranded on a deserted island, what is the one item you'd bring me?' 'A boat! With flares, and life boats, and the Coast Guard, and … and the Navy!' 'Wrong wrong wrong! The correct answer is "sunscreen"!')

But Sandi, otherwise the queen of exacting standards, was determined to eliminate Quinn from competition by tethering her to a steady boyfriend, and finally Quinn was induced to come down in favour of Jamie (whichever one he was). When she came into the kitchen to announce this to the family, Sonny wasn't sure whether she'd chosen a favourable or an unfavourable time to do so. He'd been hard at work trying to concentrate on a crossword at the same time as continuing to stall his mother's attempts to get Tom over for dinner. So Quinn's intervention might possibly have served as a helpful diversion of their mother's attention. On the other hand, Helen had already been partly distracted by her husband's antics in pursuit of his latest manic obsession, a squirrel that had been 'terrorising the neighbourhood' (that is, knocking over the garbage cans: Sonny's father set the bar low when defining 'terrorism'). And then she'd been drawn out of the room altogether by a phone call from her boss, who apparently wanted her advice about a plan to sue UNICEF. Sonny couldn't help thinking that there could be tactical advantages in having multiple distractions assist him against his mother at separate times, instead of all at once. For one thing, once she had gone to take her call, and Jake had gone out into the back yard to set a cage trap for the squirrel, Quinn had nobody left to conscript as an audience for her latest personal 'drama' but somebody who any _rational_ person could have seen was trying to concentrate on a crossword.

Naturally it was only a simple exercise for Sonny to get rid of Quinn. She took his word for it that now she had a steady boyfriend she should be with him all day and on the phone to him all night. Her objection that Sonny himself wasn't always with Tom he deflected effortlessly by pointing out that it was different because he and Tom went to different schools.

Unfortunately, even as Quinn left the room, their mother returned. True, at that point she was still on the phone—but a moment later she broke off the call when Jake, out in the back yard, started screaming. Sonny and his mother looked out the window. Their father and husband had his hand inside the trap and couldn't get it loose.

Helen and Sonny looked at each other. They could hear Jake screaming some more. Helen's understanding of the situation was written all over her face. Sonny's face, thanks to a decade of practice, was not so easily readable. He let her speak.

'You're worried about your father's behaviour.'

How could Sonny not be? He hadn't tried to deny it to Jane. He'd confess it to his mother if he had to—but did he have to?

'Mom, now that Quinn … says she's got a steady boyfriend, are you going to invite him to dinner as well? You know, to encourage her? You did tell her that once she had a steady boyfriend you'd love to invite him for dinner, and that's when she got one. And with her history she probably needs the encouragement.'

'You want to encourage your sister and her new steady boyfriend? That's what you want? Out of pure altruism?'

Sonny looked at his mother. 'You're not going to believe that, are you.'

'With your history? No. Besides, I think it would be nice to have both of you bring your boyfriends over for dinner. It would really make a special occasion of it.'

'The thing is'—Sonny hesitated for effect, even though what he was going to say was not strictly untrue—'I don't know how Quinn's boyfriend might react to a social occasion with Quinn's brother and _his boy_friend.'

Sonny's mother didn't hesitate. 'If that's how Quinn's boyfriend feels, it's something we all want to know as soon as possible. Especially Quinn. She's proved to you how she feels.'

Unaccustomedly discomfited, Sonny shifted slightly in his chair. 'There is still the other thing you mentioned. I understand Dad …'

'Really?'

'… but now we're talking about not just one person who's not a blood relative, but two. Tom's at least met him a few times, but Quinn's new boyfriend … well, he might not appreciate Dad's—um—energetic reactions to certain stimuli.'

Sonny's mother was curious to know what stimuli he was talking about. He should have foreseen that.

'Oh, you know', he said limply. 'Everything.'

His mother gave a sigh of acquiescence. 'Sonny, I'll make you a deal. I'll have a talk with your father about his conduct. You call Tom about dinner. What do you say?'

Was this what growing up felt like? Sonny had mixed feelings. 'Wasn't there a time when our deals involved cash?'

* * *

><p>At least Sonny could console himself with the thought that his advice to Quinn about unremitting closeness with her boyfriend had had some effect. He hadn't seen her again that evening at all, but when she came into the room the next day after school, as he was watching <em>Sick, Sad World<em>, she reported that she and Jamie had broken up. Sonny well knew Quinn's inexhaustible capacity for telephone conversation, but the odds were good that her new boyfriend hadn't shared it. Anyway, the news that Jamie had been replaced as her 'steady' boyfriend by Joey made even less difference to Sonny than it would have if he'd made the perfunctory effort to remember how to distinguish her admirers by name.

What Sonny didn't welcome was Quinn picking up the television remote and starting to change channels as easily as she changed boyfriends. With Quinn, what worked once should work again. He suggested that she should be at football practice watching Joey.

'It's too humid', she said. 'My hair might frizz.'

Sonny gave the crank another turn. 'Brittany's there, supporting Kevin. She has hair', he noted.

Sonny was a little put out when Quinn parried: as a cheerleader, Brittany's attendance was required. But he was not without a powerful riposte: no cheerleader himself, he nevertheless attended all Tom's luge races. Was the truth that Quinn was just an unsupportive girlfriend? (Of course: but she was hardly going to avow it.) A hit, a palpable hit!Quinn stood up and flounced out: to watch Joey at football practice or to buy frizz-proof hair conditioner, Sonny didn't care as long as he was able to reclaim the remote and _Sick, Sad World_.

Of course Quinn came back again later, but escaping that eternal return was beyond Sonny's expectations. This time he was trying to read while Quinn, waiting for Joey to arrive for their date, gabbled on the phone to Stacy. Not at all to Sonny's surprise, it was clear from their chatter that Quinn would have preferred to be with Stacy and the rest of the Fashion Club, but by now the 'steady boyfriend' concept seemed to have its teeth sunk in her as securely as a leg-hold trap. Even finding out that Sandi was dating some boy Quinn had thought liked _her _did not provide enough leverage to release her. She didn't hear the sarcastic remarks Sonny was making, either, although that was no rarity.

It was just Joey's bad luck that Stacy told Quinn about a boy band appearing in concert the moment before he rang the doorbell. She opened the door and told him to take her to the concert instead of the restaurant—the choice she had previously insisted on. Naturally the concert was sold out. Quinn dumped Joey immediately for being unsupportive.

After Quinn slammed the door, Sonny said, 'Wow. A whole day. At least you'll have the memories.'

'I give up!' said Quinn. 'This boyfriend stuff is too time-consuming.'

At that moment their mother walked in to tell Sonny that she'd spoken to his father and that they were all set for dinner on Sunday night, and to suggest to Quinn that she invite her boyfriend as well.

The original suggestion of 'dinner with the family' had been the trigger for Quinn's search for a steady boyfriend. She couldn't tell her mother now that she'd abandoned the idea. She looked as if she'd discovered, just when she thought she'd escaped the leg-hold trap, that she'd chewed off the wrong leg.

Meanwhile, Sonny was thinking about what his mother had said about having 'talked' with his father. She obviously thought that meant something. Sonny was not reassured. He was still on edge on Sunday evening. He went into the front yard to wait there so that he could meet Tom even before the front door, but when Tom arrived Sonny had not yet found a strategy. He greeted Tom and tried to make light of the situation, but Tom only responded with a disturbingly positive attitude. Sonny persevered with an awkward segue to the subject of his father and his potential to be what Sonny described, with unwonted charity, as 'a little … eccentric.'

Tom said, 'So I've heard.'

'From who?'

'You!'

Sonny was unsettled (Tom's grin didn't help). He could only agree limply. Once they were inside he made another hesitant start, fumbling out a second euphemism to describe his father, 'sensitive'.

'So', said Tom, 'no bright lights or loud noises?'

Sonny had nothing left to say except Tom's name in a warning tone of voice.

'Don't worry', advised Tom, unsuccessfully, as Quinn came down the stairs. 'I want him to like me too, you know.'

Quinn interrupted to ask them not to embarrass her in front of her 'new serious boyfriend'. It was the first Sonny had heard that she'd taken up with Jeffy. Was she expecting third time to be the charm?

Anyway, if he couldn't explain to Tom about his father, at least he could respond to Quinn's request not to embarrass her. 'I guess the bear suits are out.'

Tom asked how long Quinn and Jeffy had been together.

'It's not the quantity of time, but the quality.'

Now where could Quinn have learned something like that? Sonny said, 'You'll make a great neglectful mother some day.' Another inspiration struck Sonny, or an old one returning. He'd had fair success planting in Quinn's head the idea that if you had a steady boyfriend you should spend all available time together. How far could he run with that one? Acquisition of adjoining cemetery plots as the ultimate test of commitment? He started playing up as best he could to Tom, who was thrown for just one instant (not long enough for _Quinn _to notice) and then joined in like a trouper, even taking Sonny's hand and inventing a nauseating pet name for him on the spot. Sonny made eyes at him, doing the best he could to camp it up. He knew he'd never deceive the genuine article, but Quinn might fall for it. Then Jeffy rang the doorbell, and when Quinn answered she tried (and, unlike Tom, failed hopelessly) to invent a convincing pet name for him on the spot, and completed his confusion by telling him that they needed to talk about cemetery plots.

Diverting though this was, it didn't get Sonny any closer to a solution of the problem with his father. Once all six were seated at the dinner table, conversation began harmlessly enough with Sonny's mother exchanging with Tom and Jeffy the banalities of the giver and recipients of hospitality. Then his father joined in to say that it was great to have some more men around the house. 'This place could do with a little more scratching and sweating', he went on. 'Right, Sonny?'

Sonny's eyes widened helplessly and he realised, to his shame, that his head had swivelled involuntarily to direct a mute appeal at his mother. He recovered himself and altered his expression to a more naturally stony one which he expected her to read as 'What about our deal?' She cleared her throat pointedly at her husband, who responded with a puzzled 'Huh?'

Tom smoothly picked up the slack, saying, 'So, what's new, Mr Morgendorffer?' Oh so very briefly Sonny thought he might know what it was like to love Tom, but within fifteen seconds of commencing a _pro forma _response to Tom's question, Sonny's father was ranting about squirrels again. His wife gave him a warning reminder, but he only protested with wounded innocence, 'But he asked!'

In strict factuality, up to that point Tom had not explicitly expressed any interest in squirrels; but now he did, siding with Jake, because squirrels had eaten all the wheat thins in the Sloane cellar the previous winter. Sonny remembered Tom's assurance that he wanted Sonny's father to like him. Sonny hadn't realised at the time that it was a disguised trap. 'Tom!' he said, with a foolish uselessness that just made him feel worse.

'What?' said Tom. 'They did.' Now he was playing the wounded innocent too, and plainly with truth on his side.

Sonny's mother made one last effort to save the situation by asking Jeffy about school, but, for the hat-trick, Jeffy too was more interested in talking about squirrels and how to catch them—so interested (and this was a phenomenon Sonny had never observed with any of Quinn's admirers before) that he completely disregarded a protesting Quinn. (Or was that why Jeffy had been her third choice?) Jeffy recommended peanut butter as an effective bait, and this reminded Sonny's father that he'd prepared a fresh batch of Thai peanut sauce the previous night, undeterred by two disastrous failures in the preceding three weeks.

'Jake', his wife said at this news, 'you didn't!' (The smell of the first batch hadn't cleared from the house for three days and she'd banned him from tipping the second batch down the sink for fear of what it might do to the pipes.)

Sonny didn't want to make another addition to the accumulation of limp ineffectual protests. At least he still had satire. 'I thought I smelled something at breakfast', he said, 'but I just thought a neighbour had died.'

His mother had still not accepted that she was playing the role of the apocryphal version of King Canute, but her last attempt at remonstrance was interrupted by her phone's ringing. Her atypical state of mind was illustrated when she made one attempt to get out of talking with the caller, predictably her reliably unreliable boss, but half a minute later she was halfway out of the room, trying to help him understand the difference between UNICEF and Uniroyal.

That left only Quinn's flailing protests to fail to deter Jeffy when Jake asked him to help set up the squirrel trap, and when Tom spotted the vermin in question in the back yard, all three of them charged outside together.

Sonny went over to the window to watch them at work with the trap. Of course, his worst fears for the evening had not come to pass: something even more ridiculous was happening. He was just saying so, when Quinn gave a great cry of distress.

'_Augh! _I can't believe that Jeffy just deserted me like that! I'll never have a boyfriend! I'll never be in a relationship like you and Tom! I'm a complete failure!'

She fled the room wailing, but strangely even this did not make Sonny feel that the evening had not been a total loss. He found himself reflecting that the brotherly thing to do would be to go and console her.

However brothers did that.

But there was a bowl of rolls on the table. So he helped himself to one.

His mother came back into the room, but she was still on the phone hosing her boss down, so Sonny just took a bite of his roll. Then she finished the call, noticed the dinner party's sudden shortfall, and asked Sonny where everybody had gone. When he told her, she asked him for an explanation, and he felt oddly deficient. He did the best he could. But why had his father, Tom, and Jeffy all charged out together?

'I've heard people talk about this thing called male bonding, but if it's always been a closed book to me, I don't suppose the concept's going to enlighten you at all, is it?'

'I was asking about Quinn.'

'Oh. That. Let me see now. I think as usual she's got hold of the wrong end of the stick, because before she ran out she said she was a failure as Jeffy had deserted her and she'd never be in a relationship like Tom and me; whereas an objective examination of the evidence of what just happened here would show Jeffy treating her almost exactly the same way Tom treated me.'

'And that was all?'

Sonny twitched, but he wasn't sure whether his mother noticed. It occurred to him that sometimes pranks could be more fun when somebody found out about them. 'Well, it's possible that Quinn … happened to get the wrong end of the stick about some other aspects of how serious relationships are supposed to work …'

Maybe she had seen him twitch. 'Uh-huh', she said. 'Just what would some of these aspects be?'

'Oh, I don't know … maybe things like being together twenty-four hours a day, hanging on each other's every word … his-and-hers cemetery plots …'

'Sonny, how could you mislead your sister like that!' His mother left the room, probably headed for Quinn's room to console her. Maybe she knew how to do that.

'Mother', Sonny replied to her question, but only after she'd gone, 'how could I not?'

He was alone in the room again. He looked out the window and saw Tom and Jeffy high-fiving each other as his father picked up the cage trap with the rodent 'terrorist' now safely incarcerated in it. The three of them walked off with it. They were headed in the general direction of the car. His father would want to release the creature safely into a natural environment, and Tom and Jeffy must be going along for the ride. Everybody had left him. Wasn't that his deepest fear? Why was his mother only concerned about Quinn? He walked back to his seat and sat down again. On the one hand, total abandonment and isolation. On the other, shoestring potatoes. At least he wouldn't starve. In fact, there was an excellent meal to be eaten. If nobody else wanted any, he saw no reason for guilt about not sharing.

He never wavered from this view later. Tom confessed to him afterwards that he'd had a great time with Sonny's father and Jeffy at a go-kart track that Jeffy had directed them to when he realised it was close to the place where they'd released the squirrel. Tom even started to suggest that Sonny should accompany him there some time, to try go-karting. No doubt he was actuated by the best of motives, but his powers of reason and his memory started working again before he finished the sentence. And Sonny had to admit (to himself, that is, although he did later mention it also to Jane) that Tom never had one critical thing to say about Sonny's father.

As for Quinn, her mother succeeded in getting her to see that the acquisition or lack of a steady boyfriend was not definitive of maturity, the important thing being to do what made you happy, whether that meant having one boyfriend or a string of them. Quinn was in a buoyant condition induced by accepting this reassurance when she returned to the dining room. She was surprised that the others weren't there, so Sonny explained.

'Tom went too?' Quinn said as she took a seat opposite Sonny.

'I guess part of me always knew that some day he'd return to the wild.'

Quinn was still showing a little unwonted disposition to philosophise. 'Sonny, I was thinking that maybe guys and girls just aren't meant to understand each other? But you and Tom are both guys, and you don't always understand each other either, do you?' Sonny wasn't sure how to deal with this unfamiliar Quinn, but he was able to relax when she, like him, decided to let her attention be captured by the food.

Of course, she preferred the celery stalks. That was his sister.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'One J At A Time' by Ron Corcillo and A J Poulin<strong>_


	62. Not Being Stifled

**Not So Different**

_**62. Not Being Stifled**_

When he let himself think back on it, Sonny admitted to himself that he might have been just a little jealous of Jane.

He'd been jealous of her over Evan (and the whole track team business) and he'd been jealous of her over Tom—and they'd had words both times, and at that same pizzeria. Of course, back then he'd had nobody—and thought that he wanted nobody, not _like that_. Now he had Tom, which made it horribly unfair of him to be jealous of Jane's finding somebody. Maybe his misgivings about Nathan would be confirmed by a purely objective dispassionate judgement … but just maybe, something else was colouring his thinking. Sure, he had Tom … but he hadn't found Tom, not the way that Jane had found Tom. And he could never have just walked up to somebody and picked him up the way Jane had picked up Nathan and not just because … well, even if he'd wanted to pick up a girl, or if he'd been a girl and had wanted to pick up a boy, he couldn't have done it with Jane's nonchalant effortlessness.

Uncharacteristically, he hadn't even _seen _Nathan at the beginning. He'd been walking to the post office with Tom and Jane. They'd been in a hurry to get there before it closed (it was the day the new wanted posters went up). Jane had been a few steps to the rear and had seen Nathan as she looked down the cross street from the intersection they'd already passed. She'd made an excuse and told them she'd catch them up later at the pizzeria, then turned down the cross street to enter the stationery store at the corner they were standing on.

When she'd met them later at the pizzeria, she'd been—there was no way to deny it—full of enthusiasm. She'd managed to strike up a conversation with Nathan in front of a big display of retro stationery. Sonny hadn't even been aware of the concept of retro stationery (fountain pens? sealing wax?). It fitted, though: Nathan was a big fan of _all_ things retro. Jane hadn't been able to stop raving about his cufflinks, and the big old-fashioned car with fins, among the rest. Sonny had started to think about some things retro that might not be so comfortable, but he'd hesitated about mentioning them, so instead he'd said something about the advisability of picking up perfect strangers. Maybe he had been a little jealous.

'Hey', Jane had said, 'if I didn't have the nerve to pick up guys, you wouldn't have a boyfriend.'

That had made it too difficult for Sonny to dodge the issue. 'Well, I guess you don't have to worry about this one going behind your back with me. He sounds strictly pre-Stonewall.'

Jane's tone had stiffened. 'This is me you're talking to, remember?' She had given a hard stare at Sonny, then at Tom, then back at Sonny. 'I'm not getting involved with any bigots, right? It's just that Nathan appreciates the beauty and elegance of post-war American design, and there's nothing wrong with that.'

Tom had made an effort to ease the strain. 'I don't know', he had said lightly, 'I hate the present too, but not enough to wear a zoot suit.'

'He doesn't wear a zoot suit. He's a snappy dresser in the classical-elegant sense. Plus, he has impeccable manners and a biting wit.'

'If you put it like that, I'll revise my opinion.' Sonny had been trying to lighten the mood. 'You make it sound as if maybe he will go behind your back with me. After all, they had closets in the 1950s, didn't they? Maybe you're just the beard. I'll try to give him a chance.'

Nobody had ever said that Sonny was any good at lightening the mood. Jane had scowled and stood up without even finishing her slice. 'Thanks for the encouragement. Maybe some time you can teach me how to pass judgement on somebody I've never met.'

Sonny's eyes had followed her as she walked out. 'She's going to be disappointed', he'd said.

Tom had been more relaxed. 'Yeah', he'd joked, 'that's not really the kind of thing you can teach.' Sonny had appreciated what Tom was doing, but he'd still felt uncomfortable.

Maybe he had been just a little jealous.

Maybe next time he saw Jane and talked with her he should try to be a different person, or anyway a slightly different version.

It was longer than usual before the opportunity came along—in the hallway at school, where Sonny found Jane closing her locker. He'd already figured, when he didn't see her around, that she'd been spending time with Nathan. The _dress _she was wearing provided additional confirmation. It wasn't a runner's outfit, even without the high-heeled shoes. Retro again. He'd meant to be conciliatory, but he couldn't help himself. He started making smart remarks about retro activities. He and Jane took little flicks at each other like that all the time. But this time she got defensive. It wasn't the first time that had happened, either, he'd been reminding himself of the precedents just the other day, but they weren't _good _precedents. When she said, 'You don't have to put Nathan and me down just because you and Tom are in a rut', he didn't like it; maybe Jane was feeling a parallel dislike. When he frowned as she walked angrily away, he wasn't sure whether he was frowning more at her or at himself.

He was still feeling uncertain enough, when Tom suggested pizza after a movie, to repeat what Jane had said about their being in a rut, although he combined it with another smart remark about the time machine Jane was co-piloting. He asked Tom for confirmation about Nathan's being pretentious.

Tom's response was 'Is that any way to talk about your future boyfriend?'

'You think snappy dressers with impeccable manners are my type?'

Tom put an arm around Sonny's shoulders. 'Come on. Let's shake up our routine and go some place crazy.'

The crazy place Tom chose was a cheesily themed chain restaurant. At least, Sonny supposed it was _meant _to have a theme. Looking around at the décor, if that's what it was, as they waited for service, he realised that he couldn't have guessed what the intended theme was if his grade in Language Arts depended on it. He talked with Tom instead about Jane's social life and the impact on it if Nathan turned out to be a complete jerk. Tom shared his concern, but suggested that they had to give Nathan a chance and let Jane make her own decisions. Sonny knew he couldn't disagree.

Then their server arrived and offered them a free side dish uninspiringly named with a warning 'Supreme' in the title. She had to. If she forgot to make the offer they'd get a free gift certificate good at any of the locations in the chain, whose name Sonny was now actively repressing. She was Stepford chipper explaining this, even though Sonny was ready to bet that the gift certificates came out of her wages.

Tom looked at the expression on Sonny's face and said, 'Think we can catch the last rut out of here?'

* * *

><p>The next time Sonny saw Jane she was wearing an outfit that he lacked the terminology to name or describe, but it included gloves, and some kind of netting over her hair. She was wearing high-heeled shoes again, too. But for that, she'd have been walking away from him too fast for him to catch up as they left the school building. But she listened to him apologise for giving her a hard time about Nathan. He even let the apology show on his face.<p>

Jane put her hands on hips, gave him a hard stare, and said, 'Why do you always have to write people off before you even know them?'

Sonny's shoulders drooped and he tried to contain the defensiveness in his voice as he said, 'I've told you that before: because it saves time. Anyway, you don't usually complain about it.'

Jane softened. 'I guess it can be part of the unique Sonny Morgendorffer experience. And I suppose this retro thing can be silly. Look at me now, wearing a snood.'

Now Sonny knew which word to look up. It didn't sound as if there could be more than one spelling. He told Jane that he'd been pretending not to notice the snood. Jane said it was just for fun and Sonny told her (with lingering doubts about his own sincerity) that he'd finally figured that out.

'So', he said, feeling the atmosphere lighten, 'can I walk you to your steno pool?' This time Jane didn't take offence. At that moment, Nathan drove up to collect Jane, in his big old-fashioned car with fins exactly as advertised. Jane magnanimously offered Sonny a ride home too, and he hesitated only a moment before accepting.

Although he still couldn't find words for Jane's outfit, even he could see that Nathan's tie had been chosen to match it. He mentioned the observation as he slid into the car (a convertible, but with the top up), then figured he should say something more. 'Um … copacetic.'

'Hey', said Nathan, 'you speaketh the jive!'

'I dabble.'

As they drove off, Nathan did what presumably figured in his mind as returning the compliment (and full marks for intentions, maybe he did really have impeccable manners) by saying something about Sonny's 'look'. Sonny had spent years resolutely refusing to learn the lingo of the stylish and wasn't going to start now: the only part he understood was something about 'circa eighty-three', so he responded, 'Darn, I was going for circa eighty-two'. (He had meanwhile been appraising Nathan's own looks: he was big and well-built, well-groomed if you thought that kind of thing was important—Sonny could see all the visual appeal, for what it was worth.)

Jane changed the subject to invite Sonny and Tom to hang out with her and Nathan on Friday, 'checking out' a movie theatre outside town.

Why didn't she talk about the movie they'd be seeing instead of the theatre they'd be 'checking out'? What did that mean, anyway? Sonny was clearing his throat in readiness to respond to Jane's invitation as his mind kept ticking over. He'd been to places 'outside town' before now, not of his own will, they were the kind of places where bad things happened to people like him, where other people made bad things happen to people like him.

'Um …' he started …

The thing about taking a ride in Nathan's time machine, for people like himself—and Tom—was that you never knew when the second coming of Roy Cohn would pick you up on his gaydar.

'… I guess …' he temporised …

Jane had said, and he knew it was the truth, that she wasn't getting involved with any bigots. And Nathan was sitting right here while she extended the invitation and showing no strain. But how much did Nathan know? What had Jane said to him? 'My best friend Sonny and _his_ _boyfriend _Tom'? Or what? And even if Nathan knew—well, did Jane _really _know what Nathan was like? He couldn't deny what Tom had said about Jane having the right to find out for herself and make her own decisions—but there were other ways to find out than alone with Nathan in a movie theatre conveniently 'outside town'. There had been another reason why Sonny noticed how big and well-built Nathan was. Some men in the post-war years had _ideas _about how to impress women—come to that, _some_ men still did—of course, those ideas were errors if applied to Jane, but Sonny didn't look forward with pleasure to his own possible role in a scenario where Nathan learned this in practice.

But shouldn't he try listening to what Jane and Tom had been trying to tell him? The trouble was, he couldn't make himself sound enthusiastic. He did his best.

'… say, can I tell Tom what movie we'll be seeing?'

Nathan said, 'No movie.'

'This place is abandoned', Jane said. 'In fact, apparently it's practically falling apart.'

'I see where that would be worth checking out', Sonny said. 'It sounds kind of cool. In fact, it sounds like just the kind of thing Tom and I like to do when we go out together on dates.' Instead of using tone of voice to add emphasis, which would have called on talent he lacked, Sonny added words to the sentence hoping to underline the point for Nathan. Sitting behind Jane he could see her head move in a way that suggested she recognised what he was doing, but even when Sonny added, 'You know, I've never been on a double-date before', Nathan didn't turn a hair.

That might just have been the effect of his pomade. So Sonny returned to probing the subject on Friday evening as Nathan's car (top down now—it would have been nice to have been warned about the draft) took the four of them along the highway to 'outside town'. Besides, if he hadn't done that, the conversation would have revolved _entirely _around Nathan's wardrobe. His hat was custom-made (which was why it fit so well that it didn't blow off—and Jane wore a headscarf, so _some _people had warning and preparation) and he owned a pair of pants that once belonged to Sammy Davis, Jr. So as well as dropping hints about how the post-war era had not been a comfortable one for 'couples like me and Tom', Sonny threw in some comments about segregation, McCarthyism, and stifling conformism generally. Nathan didn't attempt to dispute with him about those things, he just didn't see why they should affect his attachment to the standards of style and decorum that he admired. By the time they reached their destination, Sonny was reasonably secure that Nathan's ideas about an evening spent in post-war style would not extend to a little impromptu fag-bashing.

The abandoned theatre was a drive-in, not a building, and as run-down as anybody could have wished: screen peeling away in large sections, fence way too dilapidated for the Tom Sawyer treatment to save it, some playground equipment near disintegration from rust. Jane, Tom, and Sonny were all still making appreciative remarks and/or noises when Nathan said, 'Darn. We're the first ones here. I wanted to make an entrance.'

Sonny echoed interrogatively Nathan's remark about 'first ones here', but he knew what it implied. He switched back at once from 'warily accepting' to 'warily alert'. There must be more people coming. Yes, here they were, and Nathan was eagerly vocal in reaction. Their cars and, when they got out, their clothes were of the same vintage as Nathan's. Nathan, inviting Jane to be introduced to them, referred to them as 'the gang', a term which did nothing to reassure Sonny. As Nathan paused to look in the rear-vision mirror and run a comb through his hair, Sonny was already reflexively turning his eye to possible escape routes. An open space was good, but if he and Tom got clear they'd be stranded in the boondocks without transport.

Meanwhile, outside the car some of the 'gang' had put music on and started practising complicated dance moves. Tom was commenting on their skill, while Nathan and Jane were getting out of the car.

'Aren't you guys coming?' said Jane, turning to look at Sonny and Tom. 'Wait a minute, Sonny Morgendorffer, I know what that look on your face means.'

Sonny returned her gaze with equal steadiness. 'Then you know it's nothing I'm going to allow to disrupt my purposes, and I'm not going to allow it to disrupt yours either.'

'Nathan …'

'Yeah, I know, you told me, Nathan's a class act. But you don't know any more about his "gang" than I do. The old post-war witch-hunt spirit may not be dead for everybody.'

Jane turned her head to Nathan, who was waiting courteously for her. 'Nathan', she said carefully, 'if Sonny and Tom prefer to sit in the car, that's going to be cool with everybody, isn't it?'

'If that's what they want.' Nathan shrugged. 'Hey, they're with Nathan. You can't be more in than that! Now let's cut a rug, sweetheart!'

Jane flicked one quick glance from Sonny to Tom and back, then turned to join Nathan. Sonny felt Tom's hand on his shoulder and turned to face him.

'There was more going on there than met the eye', Tom said. He looked more closely at Sonny's face. 'Now I think _I _know what that look on your face means, too. This place brings back some … unpleasant memories?'

Sonny and Tom had talked about Sonny's painful past experiences. They'd talked about them as much as Sonny wanted to. So he answered Tom by saying, 'I'm not old enough to have memories of the post-war years. But I've heard how the House Un American Activities Committee used to feel about people like you and me, and who knows whether some of the people here might not share some of that inspiration?'

'So when you were looking all around before, you were checking for exits?'

Sonny nodded. 'That was just reflex, though. Now that we're actually here as part of their little get-together, running for it would be bad as tactics and bad in spirit. If anything's coming, we'll have to take it, and probably nothing is anyway. I've just got used to living my life a certain way.'

'I remember you telling me that includes reasonable precautions.' Tom started fiddling around and after a minute or two he had the top up and securely fastened. Then he made sure all the doors were locked. 'That should be enough to keep us safe', he said.

'Good thinking', Sonny said. He leaned over and gave Tom a kiss.

'I see reasonable precautions don't include avoiding provocative behaviour.'

'Exactly. There are all kinds of reasons that might make it reasonable for me to keep my hands off you, but the possibility of disapproval from Nathan's gang isn't one of them.'

Tom moved closer to Sonny. 'This certain way you live your life can have its points. This evening might turn out all right after all.'

* * *

><p>Normally Sonny wouldn't have paid any attention to a hairdo, but in this instance the retro creation on Jane's head was one of the stupidest things he had ever seen in his life. The rest of her outfit was just no worse than any of the others.<p>

He didn't, of course, say this as they walked the school hallway. He let her talk about how everybody seemed to have enjoyed Friday night's 'double date' (she emphasised the phrase with malice aforethought, which was fine with Sonny).

'We were in the back seat at a drive-in', Sonny said. 'We were supposed to get into the 1950s spirit. And now I suppose you want to have your girlish curiosity satisfied about whether your best friend and your best friend's boyfriend are going "all the way". No', he continued even more flatly, 'not even close. Also, credit where credit's due, Nathan was a perfect gentleman about everything.'

Their conversation was interrupted as they reached the principal's office, outside which Ms Li was sitting at a table with a roll of tickets and a cashbox. Upchuck was standing by the table, dressed for the stage in a powder-blue dinner jacket, and spruiking.

'Come see a feat of legerdemain so dangerous that I've taken out an insurance policy on my body, and my bodily fluids. This Saturday night, I will be handcuffed, strait-jacketed, and interred within an airtight, steel-reinforced, military-grade trunk. Then, it's either escape, or asphyxiate.'

'Do we get to pick?' Sonny said, but Upchuck wasn't biting. He and Li were both behaving as if it were a serious proposition, with the proceeds apparently to be divided between what the principal was calling a 'special expenditures fund for embedding microchips in the gym equipment' and (judging by a discreet cough from Upchuck to remind her of a detail she was overlooking) the performer himself.

Sonny looked at Jane. 'Upchuck, bound and gagged', he said. 'That does sound entertaining.'

Jane bought four tickets for another double date.

* * *

><p>'Welcome one and all! I'd like to thank Mr Ruttheimer for supporting a most worthy cause, and for giving me some pointers for adapting the intercom system for post-hypnotic suggestions!' Ms Li leaned towards the microphone and spoke in what she might possibly have intended to be subliminal tones. 'I will tithe my earnings to Lawndale High, tithe my earnings to Lawndale High.' Sonny plunged into reflection as she returned to her more usually abnormal tones to introduce the performers, Upchuck and his 'lovely assistant, Stacy!' Thinking about Li's financial (mis)management was better than letting his eyes take in too much of 'Ruttheimer the Prestidigitator', his powder-blue outfit only less garish now by comparison with Stacy's 'magician's assistant' rig, all sequins and bare legs and ersatz glamour.<p>

Subliminal post-hypnotic suggestions? She'd be absolutely at the bottom of the barrel after her little conspiracy with Leonard Lamm to suck in soda company money had been scotched at birth. And now she had the increased salaries to pay after the teachers' successful strike. She must be desperate to find some way of solving the school's budgetary 'crisis'—short of abandoning things like microchips for the gym equipment and bulletproof skylights, of course …

Sonny let more of his attention back to the stage now that there was less of Upchuck to see. Muttering nervously throughout about whether she was doing things right, Stacy had helped the 'magician' into a putative strait-jacket and ostensibly fastened him in chains. Now he was lying down in a large allegedly steel-reinforced trunk so that she could purportedly padlock it shut.

No sooner had she done so than she whispered, just loudly enough to project all over the auditorium, 'Oh no! What do I do next?' A muffled noise which could conceivably have been Upchuck's voice came from the trunk. Stacy smiled nervously at the crowd.

Sonny looked at Tom to see how he was 'enjoying the show'. Their 'double date' still consisted of Sonny, Tom, and two unexplainedly empty seats. Tom said, 'Where do you think Jane and Nathan are?'

'Maybe the roadster ran out of jive juice.'

As the noise which was presumably supposed to indicate Upchuck's continued struggles kept emanating from the trunk, Li stepped forward again to say, 'What's taking so long? I rented the auditorium out, and the single Scientologists will be here in less than an hour.'

Stacy was reacting the way she reacted to most stimuli, namely, with acute anxiety bordering on hysteria. 'He was supposed to signal me! Something's wrong!'

'Panic! Panic!' shouted Li, suiting words to action. 'I foresee a massive hike in insurance premiums!'

Mr Taylor emerged from the wings and went straight up to her. 'Principal Li', he said, 'as I mentioned, I had certain experience at my last school with certain incidents where …'—and then he interrupted himself to beckon at somebody offstage, before turning back to Li and putting one hand on her shoulder as he started whispering in her ear. After another moment DeMartino appeared in response to Taylor's gesture, carrying a crowbar.

'Why do I _always _wind up _bail_ing outthe naïve or in_com_petent when their _ill-conceived _plans go awry!' he bellowed with characteristic unevenness as he attacked the padlock with great vigour but little sign of skill.

Onepu rushed up on the stage from the audience. 'Oh, please, An—Mr DeMartino, one of our precious students is in that trunk! Oh, do be careful!' She flapped over to Li. 'We have to do something at once, but we must not be recklessly precipitate! We must be so careful of the welfare of the children!'

'The welfare of Lawndale High!' shouted Li.

Taylor had crossed back to the trunk to observe DeMartino's activity. 'I doubt that crowbar is going to be sufficient for the task', he said dispassionately.

Li rushed offstage as DeMartino continued his struggles and Onepu her panic. Only Taylor seemed to be taking events in his stride. Stacy had cleared out of the way, leaving the stage, and was now standing in the aisle, near the seats of the rest of the Fashion Club, weeping furiously in a state of total nervous collapse.

Jane continued to miss everything as Li returned brandishing a fire-axe. She rushed at the trunk, trying to swing at it, but having difficulty as Onepu tried to shield it, shouting, 'Principal! Principal Li! Please!'

Li, meanwhile was shouting incoherently, though a few words were distinguishable: 'Lawsuit!' 'Liability!' 'Bankruptcy!'

Sonny kept turning his head from the stage towards the entrance to see whether Jane might yet be in time for the climax, which promised to be much more richly entertaining than he had dared to hope, but still nothing. He looked back to the stage, and then back to the entrance. Stacy was still standing in the aisle distraught. The rest of the Fashion Club were loudly commiserating with her about her public embarrassment. At least, as far as Sonny could tell, Tiffany and Quinn were sincerely appalled, but the job Sandi was doing of concealing her secret satisfaction at the spectacle could have fooled only Tiffany, Quinn, and Stacy. 'Good thing Upchuck's buried alive in there', she said, 'so you won't have to spend the rest of your life seeking revenge for the way he's humiliated you in front of the whole school.'

Without a quiver, Stacy stopped sobbing and dropped her hands from her face. 'Oh, Sandi', she said, in a voice Sonny had never heard her use before, 'you are so naïve.'

At that moment, whether assisted by Li's wild blows with the fire-axe or not, DeMartino finally succeeded in raising the lid of the trunk. Taylor looked into it.

'Empty', he said.

'_Empty?_' echoed Onepu, _literally wringing her hands_.

DeMartino turned and pointed to the powder-blue vision at the rear of the auditorium. 'He's back there!'

'Shazam!' said Upchuck, right on cue.

Li was staring at him, bewildered, swaying wildly from one foot to the other. Then, with a wordless cry, she rushed forward, still waving the fire-axe in a circle above her head.

What her intentions were, nobody ever knew—or if her psychiatrists figured them out later, they were shielded by professional confidence. Halfway down the stairs from the stage, still ululating, she missed a step and fell headlong, the axe clattering harmlessly to the floor.

* * *

><p>Jane missed out on another nail being hammered into the Fashion Club's coffin (Quinn and Tiffany were deeply impressed by Stacy's performance and hoped she could teach them the useful art of crying, and Sandi said … <em>nothing<em>). But Jane did arrive in time for the final scene of the drama, Li strapped to a gurney, conscious again and raving, and being loaded into an ambulance by psychiatric orderlies. Taylor had smoothly taken charge of the situation and was welcoming the single Scientologists as Jane walked up to Sonny and Tom to be filled in on what she'd missed ('It wasn't all good: Upchuck survived'). She came alone, and when Tom asked after Nathan she said simply that they'd broken up. Sonny had already figured that out: she was dressed in running shorts, boots, and a scarlet jacket over a T-shirt. Now that Jane was ready to admit that Nathan was a jerk, Sonny and Tom could confess their own feelings candidly.

'Maybe I did all that goofy stuff because I was a little too eager to be hanging out with a cool guy', said Jane.

Now that she'd made a frank admission, Sonny felt he should reciprocate. 'No. You were right about fun being fun. I'm gonna try and remember that on the off-chance that I allow myself to have some.'

'I guess Nathan's stylish good looks blinded me to the profound jerkiness underneath.'

Sonny said, 'You always did have a weakness for the cute ones', and Tom blushed.

With things more comfortable between them again, Sonny later heard more from Jane about the circumstances of her break-up with Nathan. On the fateful evening he'd arrived to pick her up and take her to a tiki bar. She'd been a little put out when she'd reminded him of the agreed plan to go first to the magic show and he'd wanted to blow that off. Then he'd told her that he didn't think she was ready to mix eras by wearing 1940s shoes with a 1950s dress. She'd tried to get him to lighten up by saying that _he _was wearing a 1940s zoot suit (yes, he really did own one after all—'for special occasions') to a 1960s tiki bar, but instead of lightening up he'd been horrified to the point of going home to change. So she'd told him straight out that he was taking something they were doing for fun and being too serious about it. He'd started ranting about 'pride' and 'standards' and 'true believers', they'd had a brief stand-up shouting match, she'd told him to leave, and he'd left. Once she'd realised that they weren't doing the retro thing for fun (or at least that Nathan wasn't), she'd seen no reason to keep doing the retro thing at all. Or the Nathan thing. She didn't seem too broken up about it, so it couldn't ever have been serious.

A few other things also came out into the light of day over the course of that fortnight. A few members of the school board had been in Upchuck's audience and impressed by Taylor's performance in a crisis. It turned out that he'd had more experience as an assistant principal at his old school than Lawndale High's current assistant principal, who'd only been in the job a few years and also only had a few years to go before retirement (it figured that Li would want somebody in that position who was just looking for an opportunity to coast for the remainder of a career and wouldn't make any waves). So the school board appointed Taylor acting principal during Li's temporary absence at the funny farm.

Once Taylor was (even temporarily) in charge, some other things came to light. The pay rise the teachers' union had won had exacerbated what everybody knew had already been the school's budgetary problems, which helped to explain why Li had been so worked up about financial issues on the night she cracked. The money she'd been getting from things like renting out the auditorium to single Scientologists had helped a little, but it wasn't anything like what Leonard Lamm had led her to hope she might raise from a soda company. Then there was the little matter of the cryptically named 'liaison fees' she'd secured for Lawndale High from Grove Hills for unspecified services which had somehow come to an end the previous year. But Taylor had been able to make an impressive presentation to the school board, to the PTA, and to a hastily called school review meeting (clashing with no football games). If the school sold off the satellite scanner, the polygraph machine, the security cameras, and all Li's other favourite gear, and more importantly dispensed with the recurrent expenditure on bomb-sniffing dogs and 'miscellaneous security services', it could easily afford the teachers' pay rise _and _reverse all the other cuts to actual educational activities.

Sonny couldn't even claim to be any more unsurprised than anybody else when it was announced that Ms Li was taking early retirement 'for medical reasons' and that Mr Taylor would be the new principal of Lawndale High.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Life In The Past Lane' by Anne D Bernstein<strong>_


	63. End Of A Feud

**Not So Different**

_**63. End Of A Feud**_

'Sandi, I had another idea, but … you're President of the Fashion Club and I need to you to tell me whether it's a good idea or a bad one.'

'Well, go ahead, Quinn.'

Sandi's voice had only its normal 'hoity-toity' tone, not the extra 'hoity-toity' one that meant she was ready to rubbish whatever Quinn said automatically, or try to use it to score a point against Quinn somehow. Quinn was encouraged.

'I was thinking, seeing as so far the ideas we had inside the Club don't seem to have worked out, maybe we could ask somebody outside the Club who's good at dealing with bummed-out stuff.' Quinn deliberately didn't mention anybody specifically.

'Hmm …', went Sandi, as if she were thinking about Quinn's suggestion. 'There's that boy who turned out to be your _brother_, Quinn, he's supposed to be good with bummed-out stuff. But he's not really interested in female things, is he?'

Quinn bristled. 'If your attitude is that he's not the right sort of person …', she began, but Sandi interrupted in a hurry.

'Don't be so quick to jump to conclusions, _Kuh-winn_. It was my suggestion, if you recall, that your brother might have qualities to help in this situation, but as _President _of the Fashion Club, I have to consider the most _suitable _way of approaching an outsider.'

'Well, sometimes you can get Sonny to do things by paying him money—if you think that would be suitable, of course, Sandi.'

'In view of the serious nature of this crisis, I could call an emergency meeting and suggest spending from the Club treasury.'

Quinn squeezed her hands together. 'That is such a good idea, Sandi!'

'Now, as President I delegate you to speak with your brother. Depending on your report, I will decide whether to negotiate with him officially.'

* * *

><p>Sonny had been struck by the way Quinn was worked up about her little 'crisis' in the Fashion Club. Perhaps she was more worried about problems there than she would otherwise have been because of the drama going on at their own house. Of course, he could use a little distraction from that himself. And he was being offered money. He'd made it a condition of giving his help, though, that he didn't have to speak to the whole Fashion Club together. Interviewing the members separately was probably better technique anyway, but he didn't think he could have stomached dealing with them all at once regardless of recommended procedure.<p>

Now he was going over his interview notes. The problem began with Stacy and Tiffany buying identical dresses. Sandi said it would give powerful ammunition to the Club's 'enemies' if two of its members were seen wearing the same dress. (Sonny couldn't see this. If he'd been writing a list of their 'enemies', he would have put himself near the top, and he couldn't see how he could use this so-called 'ammunition', but never mind.) According to Sandi, it would (mysteriously) be even worse if they wore their dresses at different times and these unspecified 'enemies' started spreading a rumour that there was actually only one of the dresses and they were sharing it. They couldn't return the dresses to the shop where they'd bought them, the two-week grace period having elapsed. Sandi had come up with the ingenious idea of settling the matter with a debate, but Tiffany had not properly grasped the concept. She'd got as far as stating a conclusion, that she should have the dress, but had not understood what it meant to advance a supporting argument. Sandi and Quinn had had some strange compunction about ruling her the loser by default.

The solution was simple and Sonny started on his report at once—he had arranged to provide it in writing so he wouldn't have to speak to any of them again. If only one out of Stacy and Tiffany could have the dress, one of them needed to buy the other's. A sealed-bid auction could determine which one would pay, and the price. It was so easy to explain that Sonny padded out the report with some lagniappe, suggesting options for the high bidder: keep the second dress in storage as a replacement for when the first wore out; give it as a present to a relative or friend living somewhere else; sell it to a second-hand shop in a remote location to recoup some money; use the material to make something else (Fashion Club members were bound to have better ideas than Sonny did about matching accessories for which it would be suitable).

He wished the problems at home could be solved as easily.

His cousin Erin was getting a divorce from her husband Brian; his aunt Rita, with the assistance of her mother, Sonny's grandmother, had guilted Sonny's mother into handling the legal aspects of the divorce; Erin had been supposed to come to stay with them to discuss the matter, while Rita went to New York with her latest beau, an actor called Ralph; Erin hadn't shown up because her grandmother had sent her to a Swiss spa for a week to calm her nerves; but Rita had come to stay in Erin's place because Ralph had broken up with her, when she'd already arranged to have her house painted during her planned trip away. When Sonny had told Jane about how his family was suffering for his mother's family's crap, she'd mentioned that he didn't even seem to be looking forward to his ringside seat at Erin's gut-wrenching break-up and he'd said, 'I know. It's like I've forgotten how to have fun.'

His mother's grievances against his aunt were not new to Sonny. He'd heard them endlessly rehearsed, and he knew from his aunt Amy that they went back to childhood. Attention and money had been lavished on Rita (and her daughter, Erin) that Helen (and her children) never got, without Rita ever putting in any effort of her own: she'd never held down a job and had married or otherwise paired up with one man after another, none of them worthwhile. Those were Helen's grievances. On the other side, Sonny gathered that Rita resented what she regarded as the chip on Helen's shoulder and as the compulsive over-achieving that made other people look bad. Rita thought that Helen would _get _more attention from her mother (and other family members) if she _gave _more attention. She'd seen it as an example when Helen had tried to suggest that, not being a specialist in divorce law, she might not be the best person to handle Erin's case. Sonny's knowledge of the legal profession told him that from an objective point of view his mother was exactly right: Erin would be better off with a lawyer who was more junior but had extensive specific relevant experience. Obviously his aunt Rita did not share that knowledge and could only react to Helen's reference to somebody 'junior' as her sister attempting to dodge family responsibility and palm her off.

The Morgendorffer house had become the venue for all this to be relentlessly ground down by the two sisters' metaphorical molars to a slurry from which all flavour had been drained. Quinn, desperate, had been trying to bond with Sonny, and to get him to join her in maintaining the family peace, and the situation also probably had something to do with her overreaction to the little Fashion Club 'drama'. At least that had provided Sonny with a brief if stupid distraction. In the meantime, his mother and his aunt had boxed the compass of their disagreements until Quinn relayed a telephone message from Erin about a previously undisclosed pre-nuptial agreement which guaranteed a fifty-fifty split. This complication had suggested once again to Sonny's mother that a more experienced lawyer should deal with the case, but Rita's reaction was the same as before and they were off round the circle again, making Quinn even more eager than before to have Sonny collaborate with her in the hope that he could solve this situation for her the way he'd solved the one with the Fashion Club. She'd even cancelled her dates to stay home with him, and the only thing that made that seem less dramatic than it should have was the way everybody else in the family was acting. Their father already bore the scars of the recurring conflict between his wife and her older sister. Even before the change of plan which brought Rita to their house, when it was only Erin who was expected to be physically present, he'd felt the need to mix up a whole pitcher of martinis as a precaution, and when his sister-in-law came through the door he'd started drinking directly from it. Now things had reached the point where he had literally fled his own house, not planning to be present again until Rita had left.

With his mother and his aunt on the brink of mutually assured destruction, his sister clearly having a nervous breakdown, and his father on the lam, Sonny did not have time to chat or hang out with Tom, and Tom didn't quite seem to grasp this. He'd make an attempt at contact, meekly abandon it—and then call up, or round, again and again. His family, Sonny had to deal with; Tom, he didn't.

Strictly speaking, the situation between his mother and his aunt was not his to _deal _with. If he tried a manipulative manoeuvre, the odds were he'd find himself out of his depth. What he was going to do was the kind of dealing that his father and his sister weren't managing, just weathering the storm.

The storm winds were swirling yet again, as they would keep doing until Rita left. Mothering was the most prominent theme at the moment. Sonny's mother was still angry about his grandmother's approach, blatantly favouring Rita, lavishing money on her and Erin and leaving little or nothing for anybody else (the expenditure on Rita's _first _wedding had left Sonny's parents having to pay for their own wedding and barely able to afford a honeymoon). Rita made a great deal of her own maternal work raising Erin, and implicitly and explicitly contrasted herself with Helen, obsessing about work at the expense of her family. Sonny was by now so familiar with the twisted logic that he didn't need to eavesdrop on more than one word in five to know where the argument was up to: even without listening at all he could have recited the totality of the debate in his sleep. The only thing that was worrying him slightly was that if Rita's visit lasted much longer he might actually start doing that, literally, and even that wouldn't be a major problem because nobody else would pay attention.

Sonny and Quinn were in the living room, with the sounds of their mother and their aunt leaking in from the kitchen, when the phone rang. Quinn, sitting next to it, picked it up. She was thrilled when it turned out to be Erin, ringing to announce that the divorce was off. She couldn't wait to take the news to the two sisters in the kitchen, as if it would help the situation. Sonny knew better, but he also knew that this was a lesson Quinn could only learn from her own experience. He trailed behind her to hear her explain that Brian had flown to Switzerland and reconciled with Erin and that they were now having a second honeymoon. He was curious to see exactly how this would become more fuel for the fire. Theoretically it should be good news for everybody, but he knew that wouldn't be how things would play out. How would they play out?

Answer: his mother would jump past the bit about how she was now freed from responsibility for practising divorce law to the immediate inference that any second honeymoon would be another contribution from her own mother's credit card to the only branch of the extended Barksdale family it ever helped out. And the two Barksdale sisters present were off again: round seventy-seven, or whatever it was.

The doorbell ringing at that moment, Sonny took responsibility for going to answer it, allowing Quinn to remain behind and continue her education. Again it was Tom, still with nothing better to say than 'Hey, how's it going?'

Registering in his full consciousness only one word in five was still enough to tell Sonny how it was going. 'Oh, just fine', he said. If Tom wanted to turn his attention to constructing his own full mental transcription, that was his business.

Behind Sonny, Quinn, more educated than she could bear (she never had liked being educated), came rushing out of the kitchen, through the living room, and then up the stairs, crying as she did so, 'Oh, when will it stop? When? WHEN?'

Sonny was just about to suggest to Tom that they step away from the crossfire, when the subsection of his awareness still focussed in the appropriate direction picked up that his aunt Rita had formulated a novel attack on her sister's parenting and defence of her own. What pinned his attention and fixed the words in his mind was the silence that followed them. His mother was never silent like that, certainly not in response to Rita. That was more like one of his own responses. Rita's not breaking the silence told him something about his mother's body language, and kept his attention held.

Then his mother did speak, in a voice he'd never heard her use before. It wasn't an angry voice (he'd heard all her angry voices before, with Rita, with his father, with himself and Quinn, with her work). It was a deadpan voice, a voice without intonation, inflection, or modulation of any kind, a voice without affect. It must be _his _mother, because it was his own voice.

Tom picked up on that too. 'I never knew your mother could sound just like you', he said.

Looking at him, Sonny figured he too had picked up the words of that last exchange, but wasn't saying anything about them. Those words made Sonny think again of weathering the storm. Still looking at Tom, he asked himself how you weather a storm, and answered himself that one way was to look for something that offered shelter.

'If I haven't permanently antagonised you by rebuffing your attempts to be supportive over the last week', he said, 'would you like to go for a walk?'

When Tom just nodded, Sonny came out, shutting the door behind him. 'I've never told you about what used to go on between my mother and my aunt Rita', he said. 'And since you were just present at the moment when it changed from "what goes on" to "what used to go on", you might as well hear the story.'

At a leisurely pace, one stroll around the block was long enough for Sonny to tell Tom the whole story of the Barksdale sisters, not just Rita and Helen but Amy as a bonus—even the parts he had heard about but not seen, like Rita and Helen getting maudlin drunk together after their fight at Erin's wedding reception, and saying how much they loved each other. All the repetition made the story easy to summarise. Tom said, 'Wow. Growing up in a repressed household is so boring next to this stuff. We always have to pretend problems don't exist. Gets pretty inconvenient when there are odours involved.'

'Well, whatever a family's pattern, it's good to have support from outside it. If you've got sense enough to let yourself accept it.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Human relationships, huh? Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Like Erin and Brian, perhaps. My non-existent-in-the-first-place optimism wasn't exactly nurtured by my twenty-four-year-old cousin's trip to the brink of divorce.'

'I can see how that might affect you.'

'I suppose if we can't get married at least we don't have to worry about getting divorced.'

It was the only reference that either of them made, even indirectly, to the words of the final exchange between Sonny's mother and his aunt.

What Rita had said was: 'At least I brought up a normal child, one who _could_ get married.'

And Helen's response had been: 'Will you need any help packing, Rita, or can you manage that by yourself?'

Sonny and Tom were now back in front of the Morgendorffer house. They stopped walking and Tom said, 'So, want to go see a movie?'

'I really should. I mean, I'd really like to. And I will if you can see your way to giving me a rain-check. But Aunt Rita's car's gone, and I ought to go inside and check on what's left of my family. Speaking of which, Dad left me in charge of the coded message to tell him whether it's safe to come back, and he might have called while I was out. Can I see you soon?'

'Sure.' Tom put a hand on Sonny's shoulder and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. Then he turned and started to walk away, looking back over his shoulder after a few steps to give a farewell wave. Sonny waved back and then turned himself to go into the house.

He found his mother and his sister in the kitchen, in the calm after the storm, cutting up a package of pre-prepared cookie dough into slices ready for baking.

'Hey, Sonny', Quinn said, 'Dad rang while you were out. He wanted to talk to you about some birds or whatever.'

'That was a code', Sonny said, and then, as his mother nodded knowingly, 'I don't know why he thought we needed to have a code.'

'Yeah', Quinn said, 'I just told him Aunt Rita was leaving.'

Their mother nodded again. 'And then I took the phone and told him what happened, and asked him to come home as soon as he can.'

Sonny watched silently for a minute or two as the cookie preparation continued. Then he said, 'I look forward to eating some of those cookies.'

'Not for me', Quinn said. 'But I tell you what. _Gone With The Wind _is on television tonight. It's got that Civil War you and Dad are always talking about, plus this really big fire. I thought we could all watch it together, with cookies for whoever wants cookies and celery sticks for whoever wants celery sticks. But you don't have to decide now.'

'I might just head up to my room for a little while, then.'

In his room, Sonny couldn't decide whether he wanted to talk or not to talk. He settled on email, and sat down at his computer to write to Luhrman, who was in his mind because of the memories of Erin's wedding.

Then he went back downstairs to have dinner with his family (his father having returned), and to watch _Gone With The Wind_. Quinn was in tears at how sad it was, and it made Sonny feel like crying as well. But the cookies tasted good. He thanked his mother and his sister for them, and went to bed feeling very strange.

He felt more nearly normal in the morning. When he logged on to the computer to see whether there was a reply from Luhrman, and thinking also of possibly dropping a quick line to Tom and maybe even one to Jane while he was at it, he was surprised by an email from his Aunt Amy. It said that she would have called, but she couldn't be sure who'd answer the phone, and she particularly wanted to speak to him first, and could he call her?

When he did so, she explained that she'd been prompted by hearing from her mother, who'd passed on Rita's version of recent events. 'I know this is strange', she said, 'but I wanted to speak to you to pass on a message to Helen for me. My sisters have been fighting with each other all my life, and I think even before that, and now that's over there's something I want you to tell your mother from me.'

'Okay', Sonny said.

After he got off the phone, though, he decided he wanted to speak to _his _sister first and then to his mother afterwards. He found Quinn and told her about Amy's call.

'She said to tell Mom that no matter what happened she'd still always have one sister to fight with. And I was thinking about that, and about how I've been really strange around Tom this week because of all the stuff that's been going on around here, and about how maybe you were having a similarly unanticipated reaction, wanting to spend time with me? So I thought before I tell Mom what Amy said, I'd just tell you that no matter what happens, you'll always have a brother to fight with.'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Aunt Nauseam' by Jacquelyn Reingold<strong>_


	64. Where You Might Not Expect It

**Not So Different**

_**64. Where You Might Not Expect It**_

When Sonny had finished elementary school, he'd thought that middle school couldn't be any worse.

On his first day at middle school, with great symbolic aptness, some of the eighth-graders had left a half-brick hidden under a ratty old cap where he was sure to walk past. He'd seen them laughing after he'd tried to kick the cap out of the way.

No matter how bad things were there was absolutely no reason why they couldn't keep getting worse and worse.

He'd probably had that lesson repeated for him an average of once a year all his life. When he'd started at pre-school he'd thought nothing could be worse than having to spend his days in a house with Quinn.

So why should he expect getting into college to change the pattern?

But wouldn't it be great if it did?

If he chose the right college … if it made any difference which college he chose … people seemed to believe it did … that just meant life was setting him up so that when he got to college and his life got worse it would be his own fault for choosing the wrong one … or, just as bad, life was positioning him for the biggest disappointment yet when he didn't get into the college he'd set his heart on … at least that couldn't happen if he didn't set his heart on his choice of college, or on college at all … but if he didn't get into the college he wanted, or any college, there'd still be something else, and there was no reason why _that _shouldn't be worse ….

He hated this.

An exquisitely artistic detail embellishing the workmanship of the implement with which he was now being tormented was the scholarship question. A dedicated school career of avoiding extracurricular activities should have established his credentials as somebody lacking the well-rounded motivation and involvement in balanced interests that qualified you for most scholarships. Except that, as his mother incisively pointed out, there were scholarships purely for academic achievement. He couldn't honestly tell her that he wasn't expecting to go to college. He couldn't tell her that he didn't want a choice of where he went; he couldn't bear to tell her that he _did_. So he retreated into silence, suffering with the knowledge of how poor a defence it was in this circumstance. He had no winning cards left when she laid down her top trumps.

'Then promise me', she said, 'you will at least look into some kind of prize or scholarship. Okay? Not for me, not for your father, for you.'

He sighed and conceded the game.

* * *

><p>Sonny spent an unpleasant night surfing the Web and reading about scholarships for concert violinists, nationally ranked gymnasts, and published authors (despite what Tom had told him, having an 'encouraging' rejection letter wouldn't come close to scoring the points he needed). The nearest he got to a possibility was a ten-thousand-dollar prize from the Wizard Foundation if you could somehow con them into believing that you embodied the 'Wizard pursuit of excellence'. To apply, though, you had to write an essay about how you'd change the world if you could. Jane helpfully offered to paint mushroom clouds if he needed any illustrations.<p>

It helped to have Jane as a touchstone in a world with Jodie Landon in it. After nearly three years of experience, Jodie was still asking Sonny to take on an extracurricular activity. This time it was filling a vacancy caused by the resignation of one of the editors of the school newspaper. After he had provided her with the needless confirmation that he had not suddenly changed into a completely different person with an interest in extracurricular activities, she asked him what he was going to do about college applications, which led him on to tell her about his exchanges with his mother and about the Wizard Foundation Prize. She wished him luck with it.

'If I actually follow through', he said. 'But I'm hoping to come to my senses before that happens.'

* * *

><p>He wasn't sure whether it counted as 'coming to his senses' or not, but he came up with a way of writing an essay for the Wizard Foundation that he was able to square with his conscience. When he'd finished it, he read it to Jane.<p>

'In sum', he concluded, 'my world would be made happier by the simple step of eliminating sexual taboos of all kinds. People with unusual tastes could satisfy them, and be happy without suffering from social pressures against them. Public figures would not have to lie and hide their private lives but could be judged only on how they really benefitted people. And, of course, promising young students, such as myself, wouldn't have to spend their time grovelling in scholarship essays, because they wouldn't have to compete with people who were only interested in higher education as an avenue to sexual opportunities.'

He didn't get quite the reception from Jane he'd hoped for. Of course he didn't want her to be enthusiastic. He wanted her to call it the way she saw it. But she seemed _too _ready to explain to him how the system worked. He'd written the essay with sincerity, as much as that was within his repertoire, but Jane seemed to think that was quixotic and naïve (she pretended to look around for his 'born yesterday' umbilical cord). They didn't get any deeper into the discussion because they were interrupted first by his mother and then by his father. It was a bad day when having his family interrupt a conversation with Jane was a good thing.

Divergent as his essay had been from what Jane (and, to be honest, he himself) had expected the Wizard Foundation to want, it wasn't divergent enough to stop them from selecting him as a finalist although, so as to keep him from feeling too flattered, he was only a dime-a-dozen one of a hundred finalists.

The next blow, just to make things worse, he could only blame himself for. He'd done a bad day's work for himself when he told Jodie Landon about the scholarship, because she'd gone and applied for it too. Naturally _she _had got into the finals. So too had Upchuck, but for that circumstance Sonny could place all the blame on the general malignance of life. He himself was not even indirectly to blame, because Upchuck had not heard of the contest through Jodie: _she _had figured out at once that the way to improve your chances was to reduce the potential pool of competitors by _not _telling people about it.

'No hard feelings, right?' she said to him.

'Why would you have any?' he replied.

* * *

><p>Sonny sat in the school cafeteria explaining to Jane how the cards were stacked against him. He didn't know how he could be expected to compete, in a contest like this, with Jodie Landon; and Upchuck, having discovered that Wizard CEO Mark Straum had set up a small business importing exotic candies while still at school, had done the same himself. He had offered Sonny an opportunity to invest in his dot-com as an incentive to compare notes on their applications and interview plans (he had also offered a wasabi gummy-fish of the kind favoured by Straum). Sonny couldn't imagine how he'd been able to turn Upchuck down.<p>

He hadn't exactly expected sympathy, as such, from Jane, but her reactions suggested that she was preoccupied by something which was bugging her on her own account. Before Sonny could figure out what it was, Jodie came up to their table. Sonny's sarcasm about the way she'd used the information he'd given her had elicited some kind of remorse. She tried to make it up to him by sharing information about an interview coach her father had found out about. Sonny had already heard of this same Dr Danada from his mother. Hearing Sonny and Jodie talking, Jane echoed, unknowingly, the sentiments Sonny had expressed to his mother when she first made the suggestion, about the unfairness of any advantage that might be provided by interview coaching. Jane's sarcasm made Jodie remark that she sounded almost like Sonny.

Sonny said, 'Does that mean I've been sounding like you?'

At that moment Brittany chanced to pass their table and gave them all one of her perennially insufferable sunshine greetings.

Sonny said, 'If any of us start to sound like her, it's time to panic.'

* * *

><p>The ultimate horror of the competition for the Wizard Foundation Prize was revealed to Sonny by Tom, who had come over to help him practise for his interview. Somehow (did Mr Sloane leave corporate annual reports lying around the house for the family's light reading?) Tom had found out that Wizard had a hideous record of employment discrimination. After a little routine sarcastic sparring he laid out the facts for Sonny. Sonny wondered whether Jodie knew, remembering the experience of working with her on Mrs Bennett's 'real-life economics' project.<p>

Tom was surprised by the calmness of Sonny's reaction. 'That's it? No righteous indignation? No protesting of sexism and racism? This is where you usually leap up and swear you won't be coopted by these bottom-feeding weasels.'

'Yeah, it is.'

'So why aren't you leaping and swearing?'

'Um, my foot's asleep.'

* * *

><p>When Sonny had digested Tom's information a little, all he could think of to do was share it with Jodie. He figured that if he was going to act on Tom's implied advice and take a stand against Wizard's iniquity, that stand might be minimally more effective if he made it in conjunction with at any rate one other person. He went round to the Landons' at once.<p>

He'd just finished explaining to Jodie what he'd learned from Tom when her father happened to walk in. It turned out he already knew all about Wizard from reading an interview with CEO Straum, whom he described as one of 'your redneck billionaires'. But his view of what to do about the situation was different from Sonny's (or Tom's). He figured that the best thing to influence Wizard to change would be for a brilliant young black woman to win the scholarship. The way to make a difference was not to boycott the competition but to win it.

Sonny figured that Mr Landon might be excited about the possibility of Jodie winning the prize, but he wouldn't be so excited about Sonny winning the prize—Sonny was, after all, neither black nor a woman, and anyway, he didn't think Mr Landon liked him. But nevertheless, unintentionally, the man had given him the germ of an idea. He wasn't sure he wanted to discuss it with Jodie, but the issue didn't arise, because she had to rush off for her coaching session with Dr Danada.

* * *

><p>At his own session with Danada, Sonny let the words wash over him and relied on reflexive sarcasm for his end of the exchange. Most of Danada's spray was marketing-speak of a kind Sonny was already familiar with, except it was even more distasteful when he himself was being treated as the product. When he responded to Danada's suggestion about a 'million-dollar smile' by saying 'Squander my million-dollar smile on a ten-thousand-dollar prize? That's crazy talk', the mighty brain he was dealing with leapt Sherlock-Holmes-like to the conclusion that he was 'giving off mixed signals', and asked him whether he really wanted the scholarship.<p>

For a moment it seemed as if they might be on the brink of a serious conversation about what it said about your own ethics if you were competing for a prize offered by a company with ethical problems (problems which Sonny would have described to Danada if he'd shown the slightest interest).

Instead Danada suggested they discuss the clothes Sonny would wear to the interview.

* * *

><p>Sonny bitched to Jane at length and in detail about his session with Danada. He figured that a good bitching session would dissipate some of the strain their bond had been under. Instead it just seemed to aggravate whatever it was that had been eating Jane up from the inside like a parasitoid wasp. She didn't approve of Sonny's 'sucking up' (from his point of view his problem was that he wasn't sucking up, and he protested as much to her); she didn't approve of interview coaching; she didn't approve of applying for scholarships at all.<p>

'It's all part of buying into the system', she wound up, 'and buying into the system is another way of saying sucking up.'

'Who made you the Chicago Eight?' Sonny said. 'This isn't the way you usually think.'

'What do you know about how I think?' Jane ranted. 'Just because a person doesn't go around applying for scholarships and using every ten-dollar word they know, it doesn't mean they're stupid', she said, and walked off and left him.

Sonny stared after her.

As if he needed anything more to brood about (not that he needed specific occasion to brood at all) …

He brooded a good deal more before the time came for the interview with the Wizard Corporation man (and of course it was a man, and a white man, and dollars-to-doughnuts a straight white man). He knew he was going to give the interviewer some truth, but how much truth? and at which point? The interviewer—his name was Brower—met all three Lawndale High candidates at once, and Sonny felt uncomfortable about going for maximal disruption of proceedings before Jodie and Upchuck had their chance. He'd told Jodie what he knew and she'd taken a different point of view about how to respond. Of course it was a completely mistaken point of view, he was right and she was wrong, but still … if he objected to the way Wizard Corporation treated women and minorities …

So for most of the interview process he didn't make too many waves. He just let the interviewer's stale, stupid, stock questions wash over him. While Jodie and Upchuck supplied over-earnest stock answers (mixed with occasional flattery for the interviewer's line of patter or his general presentation), Sonny limited his own contribution to tersely wising off. The interviewer showed no signs of appreciation for that, but Sonny did notice that he showed no greater appreciation for the ways Jodie and Upchuck variously tried to suck up to him: his face kept getting longer and longer. So it went, that is, until the end of the question-and-answer routine. Then the interviewer demonstrated that he had powers of observation and deduction almost in the Danada class: he suggested that Sonny had an attitude problem and asked whether he was trying to sabotage himself.

'Sabotage myself', Sonny repeated without question mark or other inflection. 'I've answered all your questions truthfully, and I suppose you'd pretend that's what you want. But if I were really trying to sabotage myself, don't you think I would have made a point of emphasising from the beginning how gay I am? With the CEO Wizard has, I don't suppose you're any more interested in encouraging faggots than you are in encouraging women or minorities.'

'Oh', said Brower. He looked down at his notebook and flipped up a couple of pages. 'That essay of yours wasn't a light-hearted spoof after all, then.'

For a moment Sonny was taken aback. Had he been short-listed for interview because they'd liked his essay when they thought it was a light-hearted spoof? He recovered.

'No, Mr Brower, it wasn't. I'd really like to see a world where people are judged only on the content of their character—not on their colour, not on their chromosomes, and not on the kind of company they like to keep, intimately speaking. If the Wizard Corporation isn't comfortable with that kind of world, I say so much the worse for the Wizard Corporation. If you feel queer about giving your scholarship to a queer, then I think you're the ones with the attitude problem.'

* * *

><p>Neither Jodie nor Upchuck got the scholarship either.<p>

* * *

><p>The three of them sat on the footpath sharing the misery. Jodie lamented the possibility that her answers had been too pat. Upchuck lamented the possibility that he'd relied on the wrong kind of wasabi gummy-fish (neglecting the possibility that Brower didn't have to like something just because his CEO did).<p>

They all knew why Sonny hadn't got the prize. But Jodie added, 'That wasn't a bad speech you made in there, though.'

'Yeah, well, I talk a good game. But all my high and mighty posturing about integrity wasn't enough to stop me from going to that phoney coach. I did want that scholarship. In the end I figured out that I didn't want it badly enough to turn fake, but I wanted it badly enough to get mad at you for applying. Sorry about that.'

'Sorry I didn't tell you I was going to apply. I can't believe I didn't. I can't believe I sucked up to those racist, sexist goons at Wizard, either.'

'Me neither. Who would have thought we'd be able to pursue excellence and scumminess, both at the same time.'

Upchuck burst into another lament at his own failure to get the scholarship, but this time, as he did it, he did them both the favour of getting up and walking away.

Sonny stood up too and tried to flog sincerity into his voice as he said to Jodie, 'Nothing personal, and no offence intended, but I think I'd rather be by myself for a while, too.' He turned and walked back into the school.

With complete normality, his fellow-students left him alone, until later when he was sitting at a table in the cafeteria and Jane came up to him. She'd heard about what had happened from Jodie and had come to commiserate with him, but what he wanted to know was the explanation of the attitude she'd been taking.

'No reason', was Jane's answer to his question. 'Except maybe … seeing the big brains compete for a prize based on their academic achievement—well deserved, don't get me wrong—might possibly have made little Janey feel a bit … I don't know.'

'Left out?' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Like a gay black woman hoping for a promotion at Wizard Corporation?'

'Like somebody who isn't an academic achiever seeing what the people who are get in return. I'm good at the things I'm good at. Grades aren't one of them.'

Sonny gave Jane an eyebrow flash. 'Envying me my experience of ritual humiliation?'

'Are you willing to admit yet that you're more competitive than you thought?'

'We never used to think about things like this. What's happened to us?'

'I don't know.' Jane sighed. 'Selling out?'

'I'm not exactly ready to jump the fence into Straightworld, or the closet, just to get ahead with Wizard Corporation.' Sonny sighed too. 'But I am feeling how it's hard to resist being coopted.'

'Maybe we're just getting older.'

'Yeah, I felt a twinge of arthritis when I woke up this morning.'

* * *

><p>The real end of the story didn't come until a few days later, when a letter arrived at the Morgendorffer house addressed, strangely, to 'Mr Jacob "Sonny" Morgendorffer, Jr'. Sonny realised he could only resolve his puzzlement at the superscription by opening it. The letter inside read as follows.<p>

_**Dear Sonny,**_

_**Of course you were right about my not being able to recommend you for the prize—especially when I imagined myself trying to answer some of the questions I might have been asked about why I was recommending you. Wizard Corporation, as you guessed, is not an environment in which there is a welcome for people who are openly like you—or like me.**_

_**I won't ask you not to think too harshly of me—I can see that would be futile. I will only say that I wish you the good fortune which will ensure that you never find yourself forced, as I have been, to accept employment which is implicitly conditional on constantly concealing your identity.**_

It was signed 'R. N. Brower'.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Prize Fighters' by Neena Beber<strong>_


	65. Is There A Home Plate?

_****_**Not So Different**

_**65. Is There A Home Plate?**_

That was odd.

What was he doing asleep at 4:07?

Or rather, now that his mind started to focus, what was he doing waking up at 4:07?

Unless it was 4:07am … but in that case, when had he gone to bed?

Simple: he hadn't formally gone to bed, he had just fallen asleep while on Sonny's bed, and now it was four-oh-se-oops.

Tom carefully shook Sonny awake. He must have found reading his macroeconomics text as soporific as Tom had found reading Kant's _Critique Of Pure Reason_, or they'd never have got into this mess.

Sonny, waking, took in the full import of the clock's message as readily as Tom had. A speedy and silent departure was of the essence. The bedroom door squeaked as Sonny opened it, and they quietly agreed that Tom should go alone to minimise the noise.

He reached the front door without incident, but when he tried to turn the handle it stuck. It was in this position that he was surprised by Sonny's father, emerging from the kitchen in his pyjamas carrying an after-midnight snack. Tom started fumbling for an explanation, but Sonny's father only commiserated with Tom's difficulties and offered assistance getting the door open. Tom didn't dare chance his luck by saying anything, so he just held Mr Morgendorffer's plate as this unexpected early-morning apparition released the sticky latch and then asked Tom, as he handed back the food, whether he'd ever tried sake.

Tom guessed that must be what he was smelling on the other's breath. That might help to explain the strange behaviour.

'Um, no', he said. 'You know, the age thing.' He shrugged in explanation and then escaped.

* * *

><p>Helen was almost asleep but she was conscious of Jake's returning to bed. She wasn't surprised he'd been up. They'd spent an insufferable evening with the insufferable 'Tokyo Toby' at his sushi bar—Jake was hoping to get the marketing business. She'd avoided swallowing any of the food, but Jake had not held back.<p>

'No wonder you can't sleep', she muttered. 'Tokyo Toby's is poison.'

'Is not', Jake said, already settled back in beside her. He still sounded a little spaced from all the sake he'd drunk, as if he might be ready to drowse off again, when he shocked her awake with the words, 'hey, I forgot to offer Tom some lazonny …'

'What!' she said, and then, partially recovering herself, 'What was Tom doing here at this time of night?' She sat up in bed and stared at her husband. He stirred and squirmed a little higher on the pillows.

'Oh, he just had trouble opening the door. You know how it sticks sometimes, don't you?'

Helen gurned in disbelief. She looked round at the clock and then back to her husband, and reached out to shake him by the shoulder.

'Jake', she hissed, 'it is ten past four in the morning. Tom must have been here all night! With Sonny! What do you think they've been doing?'

Jake opened his eyes. 'Oh! But … I mean … what … Helen, do you think … should we …'

'Pull yourself together, Jake! We're talking about two teenagers spending all night together!'

Jake sat up and shivered. 'Wait a minute, Helen … oh, maybe I had a little too much sake …'

'Try to concentrate, Jake! This is our son!'

'Right! Um … do you think I should talk to him, then?'

Helen hesitated. She knew something had been holding back her impulse to leap up and march straight into Sonny's room to demand an explanation. She wasn't confident that Jake could handle the situation any better than she could—but it was probably the right first move.

'Well', she said, 'it might be a good start.' He sat there looking at her until she burst out, 'Go on, then!'

* * *

><p>As soon as he'd got Tom out of his room, Sonny had changed from his daywear to his nightwear and put himself to bed. He was starting to relax again, halfway back to sleep, when he heard his mother loudly exclaim, 'What?'<p>

_No more sleep tonight_, he thought, sitting up alert again as he started counting the seconds. But instead of his mother appearing at his door in full cry, there was only the sound of aroused voices from his parents' bedroom. A surprising and disquieting length of time passed before his door opened again, and then it was his father and not his mother that he saw, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.

Sonny said, 'Hi, Dad.'

'Hi! Ah … mind if I come in?'

'I … sure, why not?' Sonny swung his legs over the edge of the bed and reached out to pick up his glasses and put them on. Having his father instead of his mother do the parenting was unusual, but that didn't mean it was bad.

Correction, that didn't mean it was worse.

Sonny watched the almost concealed spasms as his father moved across the room towards him. And was he—_sniffing? _It was a little, Sonny imagined, like watching an agitated bloodhound trying to catch a scent. Sonny would have been prepared to risk a small wager on just what smell it was that his father was trying to pick up. He decided to try to put them both out of his father's misery.

'Dad', he said, 'Tom and I had a study date last night. We were both reading textbooks in the living room, and then Quinn came in and started babbling about her date so that we couldn't concentrate. That's why we came up here to my room instead. Then, when Quinn started playing the radio, we shut the door so we could keep trying to concentrate on the books. But they were both so dry that they bored us to sleep. That's all. Whatever else you and Mom might be imagining us doing, we weren't.'

'Okay, um … do you mind if I sit down?' Sonny's father gestured towards the bed.

'No, go ahead. But you don't need to give me a lecture about responsibility. Anyway, as I think I told you once before, nobody's going to get pregnant in this room. Maybe you need to reassure Mom on that point?'

Sonny's father had lowered himself gingerly onto the bed. 'I don't really like lectures', he mumbled.

'But you'd rather give one to me than to Mom? or than get one from her? about parental responsibility?'

'Actually, I'm not feeling so good. I think it might be that sushi I had for dinner.' Sonny's father looked away from him and then back again. 'But I am your father, Sonny, and you are my son. We can talk!' His face changed. 'Can't we?'

'Sure.' Sonny shrugged. 'But there's nothing to talk about, Dad. Trust me.'

'Of course I trust my boy!' Sonny's father again looked to the door and then back to him. 'But there's some things …'

Sonny sighed. 'Dad, I do know about … you know, stuff.'

'Of course you do! You're a bright boy! You know all kinds of stuff! But … well, it's like this. When a boy and a girl are together, there's … like, you know, the bases?'

Sonny drew his brows together. 'You mean, like when they call kissing "first base" and … so on?'

'Right! See, I knew you knew this stuff! And you know that with a boy and a girl everybody kind of expects that the boy will want to go ahead and the girl will want to decide when they're ready?'

Sonny genuinely didn't know where his father was going with this. He just nodded. His father swallowed before going on.

'But when you've got two boys together, like you and Tom, you don't have bases in the same places to tell you how far you're going, and anyway because you're both boys you might think, or some people might think, that you don't have to worry about who's ready for what and you should just keep going and—what I'm trying to say is, Sonny, you always think about everything you do before you do it, don't you?'

Sonny nodded.

'Well, that's good! You keep doing that!' Sonny's father swallowed again, harder than before. 'I _really _don't feel so good! I have to get a drink!' He sprang up from the bed and dashed out of the room.

Sonny took off his glasses and set them down safely. He sat on the bed for a while before getting up to turn the light out again. Then he stood by the light switch for a while before walking back to the bed, where he stood in yet more thought before getting back under the covers, and even then it took about another half hour before he finally dropped back into a light doze.

He overslept, and so had to rush to be ready for school. When he came through the kitchen, his mother was there and he could tell that she half-wanted to talk with him but was feeling uncomfortable about it. What _he_ was thinking and feeling, thanks to a decade of practice on his part, she couldn't read.

'Sorry, Mom, big rush to get to school. I talked to Dad last night. Nothing happened with Tom. Everything's okay. Have to go now.'

The one thing practice hadn't given him was the ability to say all that as quickly as Quinn would have, with commas instead of periods. That meant his mother had time to gather herself and start to say something, but before she could fully articulate whatever it was, his father came into the room and started asking his wife to look down his throat because he was sure there was something there, giving Sonny the chance to complete his escape.

From his mother, but not from his thoughts.

He was just in time to catch Jane for the walk to school. He let Jane pull the conversational weight, limiting himself mostly to phatic contributions, but she was _much _too sharp (and much too familiar with him) not to notice, and much too candid not to call him on it.

'Well …', Sonny said.

'Out with it, Morgendorffer. Does this have anything to do with your being late this morning?'

'You're complaining about _my _being tardy?'

'It wouldn't be the first time, but I wasn't complaining, and stop trying to change the subject.' Jane put her fists on her hips and raised an eyebrow at Sonny.

Sonny scratched behind his ear, breathed in, breathed out. 'I had a study date with Tom last night. We were both reading excessively dry texts and we fell asleep without meaning to and didn't wake up until after four in the morning. Then my Dad caught Tom trying to sneak out of the house unobserved, and after he came upstairs to talk with me I had … trouble getting back to sleep and overslept a little.'

'Are you trying to tell me that you had Tom in your bedroom practically all night?'

'No, I'm trying to avoid telling you that. Do you want to tell me whether you ever had Tom in your bedroom all night?'

'I knew I should have jumped him while I had the chance!' Jane started to backpedal when she saw Sonny's eyes and lips narrow. 'Kidding! I told you, I'm waiting till college. Eleven a.m. on move-in day.'

'At least you've got a plan. Look, I don't want to talk about the details of what you and Tom did or did not do together. And I definitely don't want to talk about the details of what Tom and I have or have not done together.'

'Good', said Jane. 'But … there's something else, isn't there?'

'Well …' Sonny hesitated a moment longer, and then explained what his father had said to him. He wound up by saying, 'I think he may have kinda had a point. Do you remember telling me about what went on with you and that Alison at the artists' colony? Did you ever establish exactly what it was she wanted to do with you?'

Jane paused for a moment. 'Not _exactly _… I see what you mean.'

'And thinking afterwards about what Dad said, I realised something else. People tend to think of those markers in the … physical development of a relationship as being connected with its … ah … er …'—Sonny paused to clear his throat—'… emotional development. If a relationship is … getting further … physically, then it's also getting further in … other ways.'

'But if relationships hinge on physical intimacy', said Jane, and rolled her eyes, 'wouldn't that mean our parents are still doing it?'

'That's absurd.'

Jane brandished a finger. 'Exactly my point.'

Sonny scratched behind his ear as they walked on. Then he said, 'But married with children and not doing it any more is another standard relationship phase for … standard couples and not for non-standard ones.'

'Well, I see why you want to talk about this.' Jane cocked her head at Sonny. 'But why am I the person you're talking about it with?'

* * *

><p>'Tom …', Sonny began.<p>

'You're saying my name that way you do when you're feeling under emotional pressure.'

Sonny blinked. 'Actually, I have been feeling under emotional pressure ever since … well, I've been thinking recently.'

'When has that ever not been true? Some special topic recently?'

'You remember the other night, when you fell asleep at my place, unintentionally?'

'Sure. Do you know that your Dad found me as I was getting out the door? He didn't seem bothered by the situation. You didn't get into trouble, did you?'

'No, but … you know how we've done a few things … I mean, physically … but there's also lots of stuff we haven't done?'

'Hey, we talked about this already. I don't want to push you into anything you're not ready for, and I backed off because that's what I thought you wanted. Right?'

'Right.' Sonny nodded. 'Except …'

'Except what?'

'Except I don't know what I'm ready for.' Sonny put his hand over his navel. 'I'm—I'm scared.'

'Well, if you're scared, then you're not ready, and I'm perfectly happy to leave it.'

'Perfectly happy?'

'Okay, very content.'

Sonny shook his head. 'Anyway, the point is that it's not the same thing. Just because I'm scared of more intimacy doesn't mean I'm not ready for it. I'm scared of finding out that I'm not ready … and scared of finding out that I am. And either way I'm scared of how you'd feel, and the effect it could have on our relationship.'

Tom leaned in and gave Sonny a fleeting kiss.

'I think we just did reach a higher level of intimacy', he said. 'And as for the effect on our relationship—whatever you do or don't want to do, and however it works out, I'll still be very content.'

'Then maybe I'm ready to find out a little more—even if I am scared.'

Tom looked carefully at Sonny. 'If that's really how you feel—my parents are going out of town next weekend.'

Sonny failed to control a flinch. 'Your place?'

Tom raised one eyebrow. 'Would you prefer your place?'

'My place? Where my parents live? No, no, uh … no, I guess it had better be your place.'

Tom inclined his head. 'You've definitely made up your mind about this?'

Sonny gave an over-emphatic nod. 'Your place, Saturday, eight o'clock.'

'Fine', said Tom. He smiled. 'Great!'

'Don't get carried away', Sonny said. 'We're just going to see where this goes, that's all. No fixed plans.'

'Sure. Very content. I meant every word of that.' Tom gazed into Sonny's eyes and gave him another fleeting kiss. 'I think you're making the right choice—but if you do feel too scared, all you have to do is say so.'

* * *

><p>'Oh', said Sonny, at twenty past eight, at the door to Tom's bedroom.<p>

'It's the candles, right? Sorry. I kinda like them, but if they don't feel right to you, …'

'No, it's not …'—Sonny wasn't sure how to finish the sentence. He looked around Tom's bedroom. 'Actually', he went on, 'it's a good idea. I kept thinking "Light? No light? Light? No light?", but this way things won't be concealed but also won't be glaring.' He put one hand over his navel. 'The music …'

'You don't like it?' Tom switched it off, then turned to face Sonny again. 'I guess I made the right decision not to get you a bouquet of flowers?'

Sonny looked at Tom for a moment, with his hand still over his navel, then walked to the bed, sat down, and started unlacing his shoes. 'No shoes on the bed, right?'

Tom came over to the bed and sat down next to him, just within arm's reach. 'Sounds like a good idea.' He started taking his shoes off as well.

When they were both barefoot, Tom leaned over to kiss Sonny. As he returned the kiss, Sonny put his hands on Tom's shoulders. When they separated, he left his hands there while he looked into Tom's eyes for a moment before dropping his gaze. He moved his hands from Tom's shoulders and started pulling Tom's top free of his pants. 'Okay if I do this?' he said.

Tom nodded. 'If you want to', he said, and Sonny moved his hands round to the back and kissed Tom again.

* * *

><p>As Sonny sat on a chair doing up his shoes, Tom, still lying on the bed, turned his head to look at the clock. 'Quarter past ten', he said.<p>

'Yeah', Sonny said, 'I really should be getting home. My Dad's been freaking out about a parasite he got from some bad sushi, and I feel like I should be there for him.' He stood up and scratched behind his ear.

'What are you thinking about?'

'You remember that bit in _Pulp Fiction _about foot massages?'

Tom nodded. 'The cool thing about them is that we act like they don't mean anything but they do?'

'That's right. There's a whole sensual thing going on.'

Tom nodded again.

'But we don't talk about it', Sonny said.

'Very content', Tom said.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'My Night At Daria's' by Peggy Nicoll<strong>_


	66. When The Bummers Bum '

**66. 'When The Bummers Bum …'**

Sonny explained to Jane that Tom and his family were going away for a week to 'the cove' for a wedding, 'so more time for you and me to hang out', he concluded.

'Haven't we had this conversation before?' said Jane. 'Only I said what you're saying and you said what I'm saying?'

'No, not all of it. That part about how his family must be training a secret militia at "the cove" has the unmistakable mark of Jane Lane on it, although now that you've given me the idea I may appropriate it for a story. It would make some kind of sense', Sonny said. 'More sense than Onepu, whom I detect approaching us from seven o'clock.'

'Sonny! Jane! I hope I'm not interrupting anything. I would very much like to talk to you about something, but I wouldn't want to take up your time if you're too busy to listen.'

'For you, Ms Onepu', Sonny said, 'always.'

'Oh! Well … I'm not sure I follow your meaning.'

'That's right.'

Onepu blinked and shuddered slightly like a dog shaking off water. 'I do think this is a marvellous opportunity for you, as well as being the chance to offer an important benefit to the children who will be coming here next year. We're looking for leaders for the tours we give them so that they can learn what to expect from high school. Sonny and Jane, this would be a wonderful chance for you to develop your abilities through new experiences, and I know you have so much to offer to the next intake of new students.'

Jane said, 'I'll do it.'

Sonny stared at her.

Jane shrugged. 'Hey, if I'm giving a tour then I can't be in class. Simple physics.'

'Thank you, Jane. I know next year's students will benefit from your unique perspective. And Sonny, you have a unique perspective too! I'm sure you'll consider it and make the right decision. I won't take up any more of your valuable time. I must hurry to tell Principal Taylor who's volunteered. I know he's particularly keen to have you involved.' Onepu scurried.

Sonny kept staring at Jane, who said, 'Well?'

'Taylor's keen. Don't you feel any misgivings?'

'I leave the job of figuring out what's going on in the dungeon dimensions of the principal's mind to the appropriately qualified person, meaning you. What's going on in your mind, and in Tom's? Has he asked you out to "the cove"? Not that I'm not looking forward to the opportunity for us to hang out, but, you know, your boyfriend is going to be away for a week.'

'He said he'd check with his parents, …'

Jane interjected, 'They'll probably say yes, you know.'

'His whole family's going to be there. Just because they wouldn't have a problem with Tom's girlfriend doesn't mean …'

'His family's not like yours or mine. He told me about how they all know, and whatever some of them may think privately, they've been trained from their earliest years to repress and to pretend there are never any problems. He said once that it can get inconvenient when there are odours involved.'

'Yeah, he used that line with me once', Sonny admitted, 'but at the cove it'd still be a case of too many people, not enough escape routes.'

* * *

><p>The Morgendorffers had taken delivery of a new refrigerator. Oddly, although the old refrigerator had been carted away, the big cardboard box in which the new one had been delivered had been left in the back yard. Helen asked Sonny and Quinn to put it out on the kerb in front of the house for collection.<p>

Sonny said, 'Isn't that sort of brute donkey work the reason they made fathers?'

Helen was a little surprised. 'I wouldn't have expected you to champion traditional roles like that, Sonny, but if that's the way you're thinking, you're well past the age when the oldest son starts taking on the role of the man of the house when the father is absent.'

'I wasn't being traditional, I was being lazy. Where is Dad, anyway?'

'He heard about a last-minute opening at a marketing conference, so he took it.'

'He didn't say anything about a last-minute trip.'

Helen looked at Sonny. He'd been getting an odd expression on his face since he noticed the refrigerator box, which was all the stranger because it was unusual to detect any expression at all on his face, and the news of his father's absence seemed to be adding to the effect. She explained to him carefully that Jake hadn't said anything about the trip because it was last-minute. Across her mind flashed the words 'That's what last-minute _means_'. It was the sort of thing Sonny himself might have said, but it wouldn't be helpful from her in this situation.

Sonny's face returned to its usual deadpan for a moment, and then another odd expression came over it as he asked Helen whether they'd had a refrigerator box, like the one in the yard, when he'd been younger. He said he remembered spending a lot of time playing in one.

'Oh, I doubt that, Sonny', she said. 'I don't remember you doing much playing at all.'

When she saw the look on his face she thought, _And I was doing so well!_

* * *

><p>Sonny was being weirder than usual. First he wanted to talk about a refrigerator box, like the one they were dragging out to the kerb, which he said they'd had when they were kids. A refrigerator box? Really, who cared? Only somebody weird like Sonny. Who else would want to talk about something like that?<p>

When Quinn told him she wasn't interested in his stroll down memory road, Sonny asked her what she thought was 'really' the reason their Dad had gone away. Quinn got so fed up that she took Sonny at his word when he said he could manage the job by himself. But that turned out to be one of Sonny's tricks, or something, because somehow she was the one who got blamed by their Mom the next morning when the box was still in the back yard, and she ended up being the one who had to drag it out to the kerb by herself. How much could one freakin' girl take? Even an enormously freakin' popular one!

* * *

><p>'Morgendorffer.' Principal Taylor's head swivelled like a gun turret. 'Lane', he said more dismissively before returning his sights to his first target. 'Perhaps you feel that you don't know enough about your old high school to be an effective tour guide for a new intake of students. But then, perhaps if you don't graduate on schedule you'll have an opportunity to fill the gaps in your knowledge.'<p>

'I know you're not suggesting that a student could be prevented from graduating for electing not to participate in a purely voluntary activity. So what are you suggesting?'

Taylor smiled with compressed lips. 'I know, Morgendorffer, that you are well aware that gym class is not a purely voluntary activity, and that a student who was found not to have completed the minimum compulsory number of gym classes might very well be prevented from graduating.'

'Unless that student was found to have been excused from the requirements.'

'You mean', Taylor said, 'if that student was found to have been _validly _excused from the requirements. Are you aware that our former school nurse, the one who by an odd coincidence happened to come from the same little home village as former Principal Li, has been replaced? If the new school nurse should happen to find, while familiarising herself with the records, that there was some doubt about the circumstances in which you were excused from gym class, then, as a conscientious administrator, I would have _no choice_', Taylor said, 'but to enforce the school district's rules. But I'm sure that the two of us being obliged to coexist in the same school for another year is an outcome that you desire'—he paused to lick his lips—'even less than I do.'

Sonny looked to Jane. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged. He looked back at Taylor. 'We'll do the tours.'

'Ah', he said. 'Not together. If you work separately it will double the size of the cadre of new students who will have had a special opportunity to hear about _exactly _what sort of principal Lawndale High has and how they should plan on adjusting their behaviour accordingly. Lane, if you're not sure what I'm talking about, Morgendorffer can explain to you.' He turned and left them.

Sonny looked at Jane again. 'You gotta know when to hold 'em', he said in explanation, 'know when to fold 'em.'

'Next year he'll still be Principal Taylor of Lawndale High', Jane said. 'Do we really need more revenge than that?'

* * *

><p>When the refrigerator box was still in the back yard, Helen figured that Sonny rather than Quinn must be responsible. He'd certainly had a strange reaction to it, and when she raised the subject with him again, he still did, accusing her of 'refusing to acknowledge' that they'd had a box like it when he was younger. He was still unaccountably suspicious about his father's absence, too. Helen was driven by his doubt to challenge him to call Jake for confirmation.<p>

'Why?' Sonny said. 'So he can lie to me too? Where is he really?'

Now Helen was not just disturbed for herself about the attitude Sonny was taking, but seriously concerned about his well-being. But when she expressed that concern, all he wanted to talk about was a huge fight which he was imagining, between her and Jake, about himself, when he was little. She was flummoxed, but when she couldn't recall anything of the kind, he stood up, accused her flatly of lying (again), and walked out of the room. She watched him go. Not for the first time, she wished she'd found better ways of communicating with him.

* * *

><p>Much later, Tom figured out that Sonny had actually called him on what must have been 'The Night Of The Refrigerator Box'. Tom hadn't been home, and the only message Sonny had left with Tom's mother was just that he'd called, not even asking Tom to call back. So he'd thought nothing of it at the time. After all, when Sonny had declined his invitation to come to the cove for a couple of nights, Tom had joked about being worried that Sonny couldn't cope without him, and Sonny had just joked back that after a week without Tom's cramping his style he might want to make it permanent. Of course Tom hadn't worried about that. But when Tom took the call from Sonny at the cove it didn't sound as if Sonny was joking. At first Tom had thought he was, Sonny being so hard to read, but it quickly became clear that he really did want Tom to come back early if he could. Then he asked whether Tom still wanted him to come to the cove.<p>

'Well, you could, but it's even duller than I thought', Tom said. 'I mean, it would be great for me if you came up, but I think you'd have a horrible time.'

'So you lied to me, too', Sonny said. Tom had never heard him sound this way. Sonny misinterpreted was common enough, but Sonny misinterpreting worried him. Even if Tom had changed his mind, that wouldn't be the same thing as a lie, but he hadn't changed his mind. What he'd said was just the objective truth, and normally Sonny would have grasped it without trouble. Tom tried to reassure Sonny with a more emphatic and unqualified repetition of the invitation, but now Sonny had changed _his_ mind. At least he wanted Tom to call him the next day. Tom had the idea that if he could keep the conversation going he might find out something about what was bugging Sonny, but Sonny broke the connection.

* * *

><p>Jane figured that if Sonny could cope with being boxed into the freshman tours by Taylor, he should be able to cope with a refrigerator box. She couldn't understand why he kept insisting that it meant something more. She tried joking about it, but that didn't help. She absolutely couldn't understand why he'd crawled inside it. He insisted that sitting in there 'felt right'. She was ashamed that the only reason she could give him for getting out was that the neighbours might talk.<p>

'Um … good', he replied. 'Soon they'll progress to cave drawings, and civilisation will be on its way.'

That was a more routine response. In fact, a little to her surprise she seemed to have done the trick. Sonny came crawling out again.

* * *

><p>Suddenly Quinn remembered! All Sonny's nagging and all that fussing with the refrigerator box was really stupid, but he had been right about something happening when they were kids in the old house. She'd been three or four years old and she'd been woken by the sounds of a fight: parents yelling, a door slamming, and a car driving away.<p>

She still didn't see how the refrigerator box was important, but it was important to Sonny. She ran outside and found him in the back yard with the refrigerator box. He'd just crawled out of it. His friend Jane was there too.

Quinn told Sonny what she remembered.

'Thank you', Sonny said. 'I knew I wasn't imagining it. Do you remember what they were fighting about?'

'Um … yeah … they were fighting about you.'

After a moment, Sonny got down again and crawled back into the box. Quinn looked at Jane and Jane looked back. Even Jane must think Sonny was being weird. What could be so important about a refrigerator box?

* * *

><p>Ever since he first saw the refrigerator box Sonny had been having fragmentary flashbacks to his childhood, but now, with Quinn's confirmation, the whole sequence was clear in his mind. First there was the scene with his parents accompanying him to a talk with the school counsellor. She'd tried some variation of the Rorschach test on him, suggesting that a black splotch might be seen as a fire truck, a house, or a knight in shining armour rescuing a beautiful princess from a dragon, but he'd resisted that idea. So instead she'd tried just talking with him about playing games with the other children at school. He'd told her that the other children never understood what he was talking about and made fun of him. 'I like to read', he'd said.<p>

Then there was the ride home from school with his parents trying to encourage him to at least try to socialise with the other children. They'd almost been imploring him. But he'd just been tired of everything. Tired of the other children, dullards who called him 'egghead'; tired of his parents siding with the rest of the adult world, always pushing him in directions he didn't want to go when all he wanted was to be left alone; tired of the bouncy bouncy bouncing of Quinn, who was never tired of other children or of anything else. His problems hadn't come from himself, they had come from other people. Why had his parents not been able to see that?

And then that same night he had lain in bed listening to his parents fight. Neither of them had known how to deal with the stress of Sonny's problems and their own helplessness in face of them.

'He doesn't want to fit in, damn it!' Sonny's father had ended by shouting. 'Why can't you admit that?'

'Jake, he's a child, he doesn't know any better!'

'That's what he wants you to believe!'

'Where are you going?'

There'd been no answer to that in words. He'd heard the sounds of doors being slammed, first on the house and then on a car, which drove away. He'd pulled the bed covers around him as he winced at the noise; then, as it faded away, he'd crept out of bed and into—a large refrigerator box! It had been decorated with crayons as a sort of cubby house. He'd sat there, reading, feeling safe in his box …

* * *

><p>Jake arrived home from his conference to find his son sitting in the back yard in a cardboard box, absorbed in his own thoughts. The absorption was a familiar thing, but the sitting in the box he didn't understand.<p>

Helen, when he asked her, didn't understand either. She said that Sonny had been acting so strangely that she would have called Jake if his return flight hadn't already been in the air. He knew that if his wife was perturbed enough to think of actively seeking out his own involvement, something really unusual must be happening. But he had no more idea what was going on than she did.

It was Quinn who held the clue. She reminded them of a quarrel he and Helen had had many years ago. For some reason it was on Sonny's mind again, and bothering him, and that's why he was hiding in the box. Quinn made out that she'd been traumatised for life as well. Jake might not always understand his kids, but he knew better than to believe something like that. Quinn wasn't hiding in a refrigerator box.

Jake and Helen went outside again to try to coax Sonny out so that they could all have a nice talk. When he remained resistant, Helen told him he couldn't spend the rest of his life there. Jake might not have many ideas about parenting but he knew there was no chance of that sort of cliché working on Sonny.

'Sonny', he said instead, '… please come out?'

A little to his surprise, he got through to his son.

* * *

><p>Sonny agreed to come out of the box in exchange for promises of complete honesty. His parents gave them reluctantly, but he was watching them closely and their reluctance made him more confident of their sincerity.<p>

Sitting in the living room, they finally acknowledged the fight they'd had when he was six. Maybe they really had forgotten. It had taken the refrigerator box to remind him, so maybe it was true that it had taken Quinn to remind them.

They started trying to explain the context to him. As he listened to their side of the story, it did start to feel real to him. He understood a lot more now than he did then about the stress from their jobs. Back then, they told him, his father was being slave-driven by a tyrant in a job he hated and his mother was coping with resuming a full-time workload while still raising two small children. He knew a lot more now than he did then about the pressure schools could put on families, parents as well as offspring. They kept getting called into school because of him, and it wasn't the best time for them to be leaving work for conferences with teachers and counsellors. He remembered how tense _he_ had felt, but he hadn't realised how tense a time it had been for the family.

They ended up by telling him about the fight he remembered, and how they'd made up afterwards and carried on. 'You happened to be the topic, not the cause', they said, but what could that mean? how could he be the topic of the fight but not the cause? He needed more time to work through all the implications in his mind. More time, and a place. Not in a refrigerator box, but somewhere. Like his father on that long-ago evening, he walked out of the house and got in the car.

On the road, he tried to phone Tom but could only get Mrs Sloane, Tom's mother. Tom wasn't available to come to the phone, but Mrs Sloane was happy to confirm that the invitation for Sonny to visit 'the cove' was still open. As he thanked her and hung up, it started to rain. As the rain got heavier and road conditions worse, he drove more and more defensively, but he felt committed now and didn't want to turn back.

It was another car, ahead of him, that spun out, triggering a multi-vehicle pile-up. Sonny managed enough control to swerve onto the shoulder and skid more or less safely to a halt.

* * *

><p>Jane pulled up outside a diner called 'Mom's', the place where Sonny had asked her to meet him. Trent had insisted she take his car.<p>

When she walked through the door, Sonny up-ended her perspective by rushing to her from his booth and throwing his arms tightly around her. Being a little shorter than her, his head nestled comfortably in the hollow above her collar bone.

After a moment, she put her arms around him and squeezed back.

He was still damp from the rain that had been falling earlier. Hot coffee sounded a good idea. As they sat in his booth drinking it, she listened to his story. Being reminded of events from eleven years ago had prompted him to re-examine the whole history of his interaction with his parents and focus on his own responsibility for it rather than theirs. From Jane's perspective Sonny and his parents shared the responsibility for giving each other a hard time. But what Sonny had realised was that he hadn't just given his parents a hard time deliberately—he knew about that better than Jane did—but that he'd given them a hard time just by being Sonny Morgendorffer. He explained, so that Jane could understand, going over details of the childhood history she hadn't heard before.

'At age six, I decide I don't need to talk to other kids ever again; my parents are the ones who get called into school. At twelve, I decide to try out some Shakespearean insults on my teachers; my parents are the ones who get called into school. At fifteen, I start writing violent revenge fantasies just to get a reaction …'

For Jane, Sonny didn't need to paint a whole picture. 'Your parents, et cetera, et cetera. Gotcha. But I never got the idea that they minded that much.'

This insight of Jane's, it emerged, was not news to Sonny. He'd already figured out as much, and it just made him feel worse. She wasn't sure what else she could offer him, except to say, 'You really need to discuss this with them.'

'I know, but first I had to talk to somebody I could trust.'

'Yeah, I'm sorry you didn't make it to the cove.'

'I'm not', Sonny said. 'It would have been good to see Tom, but this way, I got to talk to the person I trust most.'

_Should Sonny trust me so much? _Jane thought.

'Should you trust me so much?' she said.

'You earned it', he said without inflection, but when he spoke like that she knew he meant it.

'Listen, Sonny—you know when I came in here and you ran at me? Well, I …'

'That? Do you imagine I didn't think about that? I trust you even if you did get a little tingling rush of blood from that.' As he spoke, he reached out and let his hand rest on her wrist for a moment before he took it away again. 'And if you did, you earned that too.'

They finished their coffee without further speech. It wasn't bad coffee.

* * *

><p>Sonny's parents both hugged him when he came back into the house. It was a day for a lot of hugs.<p>

They sat down to talk about why he'd run away. It turned out they did have some insight. Maybe he didn't always give them enough credit.

Maybe his mother didn't always give his father enough credit, either. She kept trying to cut him off as he struggled to say something about the way they were always being called in to school about Sonny, but eventually he managed to articulate his thought: 'It was part of the deal. It was the other side to you being so smart and perceptive.'

Sonny didn't grasp the full implications at once, so his mother took over the explanation: 'Sonny, you can't have a child with your kind of intelligence and expect him to fit in easily with other kids. We weren't happy to be called into school because we knew it meant you weren't happy.'

His father chimed in again to complete the train of thought: 'But we were never unhappy with you.'

When they put it like that, it made an unnerving amount of sense.

'You can fit in when you _choose _to fit in', his mother said. 'And you will, too.'

'Yeah!' his father said. 'Like volunteering as a guide for those tours for new students!'

'Oh', said Sonny. 'Those.' He found he was relieved that there were still things his parents didn't understand. He stood up and said, 'I've got a big day with those tomorrow, and I'm kinda beat. I'm going to bed.' He started heading upstairs as his parents wished him a good night. He paused and said, 'I just want to say … it occurs to me that maybe I wasn't the easiest child in the world to raise, and, um … perhaps I'm quite lucky to have you for parents.' He hurried on to his bedroom to spare himself any follow-up. And to spare his parents, too.

In the middle of his bedroom was the refrigerator box. There was a note on top of it. It read, 'Didn't know if you'd need this, but just in case. Quinn'.

He didn't think he _would _need it, but then again, why close off the option?

He got ready for bed, thinking about how he'd see Tom soon and explain everything to him. Maybe Tom would drive him to school. Then he'd have to give those school tours. Anybody could show people the offices, the classrooms, the lunchroom, Purgatory and Hell (otherwise known as the gym and locker rooms)—what was there that he personally was specially equipped to point out to a bunch of eighth-graders? All the places around the school where he'd been beaten up, perhaps. Would that seem self-pitying? At least it would remind them that school sucked.

He got into bed and turned out the light. By the time you reached eighth grade, you shouldn't need reminding that school sucked. The ones who hadn't figured it out by then would be the ones like Jodie Landon, for whom school didn't suck. Or at least they wouldn't admit it.

Taylor had paired him with Jodie as a tour guide. Jodie could take care of the people who didn't believe that school sucks, the Kevin Thompson and Sandi Griffin types. Was there any advice he could give the others? Stand firm for what you believe in, until and unless logic and experience prove you wrong? The truth and a lie are not 'sort of the same thing'? He might sound like a suck-up. Maybe he should advise them not to under-value having a friend to watch your back. Maybe he should just advise them never to pass up the offer of a slice of pizza. That would sound credible, at least.

Maybe he'd get some credibility from telling some version of the whole Barch-O'Neill saga. Or maybe that was too wild to believe. Maybe it would make him sound too much like a grandstanding blowhard. Still, he could make it entertaining if he tried, at least for part of the audience. If he did that, he'd feel better about going on to warn them to be careful of Taylor. And anybody who was going to spend four years at Principal Taylor's high school did deserve a warning.

As he started to drift off to sleep, he imagined himself speaking to a crowd of impressionable eighth-graders and saying, 'I can personally guarantee you that, despite the efforts of our previous principal, who was taken away from the school in a straitjacket, there is one competent and psychologically stable teacher at Lawndale High. So be sure to pay close attention from the time you start here, so you can spot that teacher as soon as possible …'

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Boxing Daria' by Glenn Eichler<strong>_


	67. Outlook: Sonny With A Few Clouds

**Not So Different**

_**67. Outlook: Sonny With A Few Clouds**_

Sonny didn't know which colleges his fellow twelfth-graders were applying to, and he liked it that way. It meant that for a little longer he could cherish the daydream of a future where he never again had to hear from or see Kevin Thompson or Charles 'Upchuck' Ruttheimer or Brittany Taylor or that guy with the tattoos and the piercings and the chain running from his nose ring to his earring, whose name Sonny had narrowly avoided learning when they both equally implausibly found their way onto the yearbook staff. Sonny looked back with pride on all the classmates he'd succeeded in not getting to know, even if some of them had beaten him up. If by the usual pattern of misfortune he did end up at college with some of those knuckle-draggers, or some of the jocks or cheerleaders or suck-ups or grinds or bigots or popularity hounds or fashion fiends, maybe he'd be able to continue avoiding them, but wouldn't it be nice if he didn't have to make the effort? How could he bring himself to complete his applications to Raft or Lloyd or Ellis or Bromwell if he knew some of those people were applying to the same place? No doubt he'd find out soon enough that there were just as many disappointing people at college. He could use even a temporary reprieve. So for now, this particular ignorance was, if not bliss, at least lower down on the list of circumstances ranked in order of unpleasantness.

He did know that Jane was applying to Lawndale State and to State University. He was trying to aim a little higher than that himself. In a way, he was expecting Jane to aim a little higher too. She had expressed interest in going to Boston Fine Arts College, but apparently she'd been having trouble putting together the 'killer art portfolio' required with the application. (He'd accidentally interrupted the process by inviting her out for pizza, and she'd told him that she'd 'only cried tears of relief for ten minutes'.) The only positive she seemed to be seeing in BFAC was that it was in the same town as Raft—they could, she said, 'meet on the weekends to eat pizza and complain'. ('Well', Sonny had replied, 'they say college is all about broadening your horizons.')

Attractive as the picture was that Jane painted, Raft was only his second choice, behind Bromwell. But applying to Bromwell presented him with a 'portfolio problem' of his own: they emphasised wide-ranging extracurriculars much more than he liked. 'Damn well-rounded crap', as Jane had said.

Of course there was another way to 'round out' your 'portfolio' for Bromwell. You could come from a family of prestigious alumni. A family like the Sloanes, for example. Tom's uncle had donated a building. Tom kept insisting it was only a wing, as if that made a difference. (He'd also told Sonny not to worry. 'You'll get into Bromwell with your incredible test scores and grades. I'll get in the old fashioned way: bribery and nepotism.')

Still, despite Jane's sarcastic remarks on the subject, and whatever Tom's motivation might be, Sonny wanted to go to Bromwell because it was an outstanding university, not because the students engaged in the rectal transport of steel rods.

Besides, he had to try a lot of places. If he didn't get rejected more than once, his mother would think he hadn't sent out enough applications. She'd probably agree with Tom's theory that a lot of rejections were good preparation for a career as a writer.

His father, on the other hand, was easily reassured by being told that under no circumstances would Sonny ever consider any military academy. He'd been so pleased about this that Sonny had seized the opportunity to let him know that he wasn't going to Middleton, either, smothering the protests about Middleton being a family tradition by pointing out that so was military school. It had even seemed a propitious moment to bring up the idea of Sonny's going on a road trip with Tom to check out colleges, first to Bromwell and then after that to the Boston area (Tom said that was where all his 'safeties' were). Sonny's father had not only approved, he'd gone so far as to persuade Sonny's mother to go along with the idea as well. All she asked Sonny was that he try to be enthusiastic when meeting the college representatives—try to be less unenthusiastic?—at least not insult them to their faces?

Sonny told her he was sure he could guarantee to avoid physical violence.

* * *

><p>Sonny finally got in for his appointment to see Lisa Goldwin in the Bromwell admissions office after she finished up her three-quarters of an hour with Tom. The two of them came out of her room chatting like old pals about a Sloane family story Tom had apparently been recounting. As Lisa Goldwin escorted Sonny in for his interview, she wondered aloud whether he was 'as full of Bromwell lore as Tom'.<p>

'Um', said Sonny, already starting to hate himself, 'I doubt it', privately thinking, _Tom seems to be really full of it_.

Once Sonny was seated across from her at her desk, he realised that his mind was automatically reverting to the pattern where he skimmed lightly across the wave crests of somebody else's conversation, absorbing just enough to remain in contact with the main flow. This time, that would definitely not cut it. He needed to focus all his powers of concentration on exactly what she was saying. Unfortunately, the effort of doing so seemed to freeze up the part of his brain he needed to generate usable responses. He was aware that his eyes were shifting evasively from one side of the room to the other, but he didn't seem to be able to stop them. It also didn't help that she was asking stock questions about his impressions of Bromwell and his reasons for wanting to attend. He eventually managed to force sentences out of his mouth. Or perhaps they were only phrases. They made him wish he could forget them as fast as he uttered them—especially the agonising 'ums' and 'ummms'—which only made the whole attention problem worse.

Eventually Lisa Goldwin asked him whether everything was all right.

If she was asking him whether everything was all right, obviously everything was not all right.

'Ummm', he said (_No! Dammit, no!_), 'do you think we might possibly start over, and this time, I'll just answer your questions instead of agonising over them internally and then blurting out something asinine?'

She laughed professionally and said, 'Sure'.

Sure Sonny was not.

When he found himself back with Tom in the outer office, Tom suggested that they get a cup of coffee.

'We should probably get going', Sonny said, 'if we want to make Boston by dinner.'

Tom looked at him closely and lowered his voice. 'That bad, huh?'

Sonny's glance flicked quickly to the secretary. 'If you want to talk about it …'

'Right', Tom said briskly, 'let's get going. Don't want to be late to Boston.'

As they headed back towards where Tom had parked his car, Sonny explained. 'Once I stopped worrying about what to say and just said it, I thought the interview went okay, but by then I'd used up five of my fifteen minutes.' He looked across at Tom. 'There's something you're not saying.'

'Well, I did notice you weren't in there so long … listen, we can focus on Raft tomorrow. I don't really need to visit any more colleges.'

_Don't you? _Sonny said to himself. _I thought all your 'safeties' were supposed to be in Boston. _This time Tom didn't pick up any hint of his thought processes.

They got to Boston a little later than they'd planned that night, and they got a late start in the morning, and then it started raining, so they didn't get quite as good a look at the Raft campus as Sonny had hoped. It wasn't bad, though, even if it wasn't in the same class as Bromwell, which had libraries big enough to park a jumbo jet in. And Sonny did talk with somebody in the admissions office.

When Tom cautiously inquired following his interview, Sonny said, 'Maybe that experience at Bromwell wasn't all bad.'

Tom's face fell. 'Hey, Sonny, I'm really sorry …'

'No, I meant that maybe I learned something from it that helped me to be more comfortable the second time around.'

'Oh, sorry I misunderstood. I just assumed—'

Sonny finished the thought for him. '—that I was as usual expressing my relentlessly sour view of the world, implying that this went so badly that even what happened at Bromwell improved in comparison. No, I think this interview went well. It helped that I got the feeling that she was just as much trying to persuade me that Raft was right for me as she was trying to find out whether I was right for Raft.' _Unlike your pal Lisa Goldwin at Bromwell_, he thought, but Tom didn't pick up on it.

He didn't pick up the opportunity for an interview of his own at Raft, either. 'We don't want to be too late back to Lawndale', he said. 'And the rain isn't going to make the traffic situation any better.'

'Okay', Sonny said. 'Seeing as there isn't anything else for us in Boston.'

* * *

><p>When Sonny got home, his parents asked him how the trip had gone.<p>

'Well, we only had time for Bromwell and Raft.'

'Those are the ones you're most interested in, aren't you?' his mother said. 'And they're both schools with great reputations. What did you think?'

Sonny was feeling the weight of his suitcase. He shifted his grip. 'I think Raft likes me better than Bromwell does, and I think Tom likes Bromwell better than Raft. He saw all the good stuff about it, and didn't seem to find the smugness a drawback.'

His mother's face took on a patient look. 'You know, Sonny, Bromwell's high opinion of itself does have some justification.'

'Remember that if I go there and then come home on break referring to you two as "the farmers".'

'What?' Sonny's father said.

'It's a joke, Jake', his mother said heavily, before responding to Sonny. 'We're glad to see you aiming high', she said, the words 'for once' visibly left unspoken, 'but in the end it's your choice, and we respect that.'

'That's right!' his father said. 'Whatever choice my boy makes is good enough for me!'

'Thanks, Dad … I guess.' Sonny heaved a sigh. 'I'm really tired after the trip. I'm heading for bed.'

* * *

><p>Sonny had been thinking of writing a short story, but now he figured he was about twenty pages too deep for 'short' to be applicable. Before he could get deeper, Tom rang to ask whether he wanted to see <em>Rope<em>. 'I thought a film about bumping off your Ivy League classmate would help us get in the spirit for next year.'

'Hmm', Sonny said, chewing at his lower lip. Tom wanted to take him to a film. 'I'll admit, a good murder movie never fails to cheer me up.'

Tom suggested it would save him time if he didn't have to pick Sonny up. Sonny made no objection to just meeting there.

'Great!' Tom said. 'See you inside at seven-thirty.'

The exchange complete, Sonny resumed typing at the point where he'd broken off, but within a minute he paused again and called Tom back with second thoughts, explaining that, 'I really shouldn't leave my protagonist all alone just after her eyeballs have burst. How about later in the week?'

Tom acquiesced, suggesting that Sonny call when he was free. Sonny again moved back to his story.

* * *

><p>'Sonny?'<p>

'Yes. Stacy.'

'Um … Quinn says you don't believe in angels?'

'Yes. That's right. I don't', said Sonny, with a complete absence of additional meaning.

'But what about curses? Do you believe in curses? Quinn said she thought you probably don't believe in any of that stuff, but just because you don't believe in angels doesn't have to mean you don't believe in curses? Does it?'

Sonny didn't want to give the question any consideration, but he couldn't help himself. 'I know that sometimes people say things or do things which are intended to lay curses on other people.' He was about to go on to explain about autosuggestion, but Stacy didn't give him a chance.

'But I didn't intend it! Really I didn't!' She began breathing harder and faster. 'See, we were having a cake for my birthday, and Sandi kept interrupting me while I was trying to blow out the candle, so I wished she'd just be quiet, and then after that she came down with laryngitis and lost her voice, but I didn't mean to curse her! And Quinn said I should find somebody who was an expert on hoodoos to tell me how to lift the curse, and you're the only person I know who's an expert on anything!'

'I'm not an expert on curses.'

'Then what am I going to do?' Stacy started to hyperventilate.

'If you didn't say anything out loud, there's no way Sandi or anybody else could know about your wish, and if nobody but you knew about it then there's no way it could have had any effect on anybody.'

Stacy managed to bring herself sufficiently under control to ask Sonny whether he was _sure_. Sonny confirmed it, but Stacy still did not look convinced.

That piece of light entertainment was not enough to distract Sonny from his own concerns. At least he could talk with Jane, as they walked home from school together, about how he was feeling, or at least part of how he was feeling, the part about how waiting to hear whether he'd been accepted into college sucked, 'although it does provide the unexpected benefit of taking my mind off every other aspect of my life'.

He thought Jane could have confided in him, as he was confiding in her, but she was cryptically ambivalent about doing so. He wasn't sure whether he should be suspicious of the difficulty in getting the information to flow from her to him or the ease.

The story, or as much of it as he got, was that she'd been rejected by Lawndale State and State University. But given her lack of respect for their art teachers, she could hardly have wanted to go to either of them anyway, surely? That couldn't really be an adequate explanation for her decision not even to submit her portfolio to BFAC, could it? And when she told him that she'd discussed that decision with _Trent_, how could she possibly have intended that as reassurance?

She did have an argument which, _as a general proposition_, he could see had merit: that not everybody went to college, that lots of people succeeded in art and in other fields without formal education—especially if the formal education was provided by 'untalented dopes', like the art departments at Lawndale State and State University. It was allegedly only 'Sloane-esque snobbery' that was stopping Sonny from seeing this.

Sonny's problem was not with the general proposition, but with the particular application: not just the particular application of the concept of 'Sloane-esque snobbery' to himself (this wasn't the time to quarrel with Jane about that, he'd save it up for later), but more importantly the particular application of the whole argument to the Jane Lane who was now telling him, 'I gotta be footloose'.

Sonny told her 'screw loose' was nearer the mark. 'I'm not saying everybody has to go to college. I'm saying old footloose Jane Lane doesn't know all there is to know yet about art or anything else, and may be making an ill-advised decision to end her education based on temporary, if admittedly justified, disappointment.'

Just at this point they reached the Morgendorffer house. Jane stopped, turned towards Sonny, and folded her arms. 'Sonny, you're so predictable' she said, as she thrust her face forward and then pulled back again. 'I knew you were going to try to talk me out of this.'

'Is that why you brought it up?'

Maybe he'd carelessly let too much into his voice. Jane gave a shrug and cocked an eyebrow at him. 'Look, Dr Freud, I appreciate your concern and all, but our forty-five minutes are up. See you later.' She unfolded her arms, turned again and walked on. He was left with some thoughts about what she'd said about him and some thoughts about what she'd said about herself, but for a moment he was distracted from both by the bundle of mail waiting for him. He picked it up and carried it inside.

The contents of the promisingly big thick envelope from Raft told him that he'd been accepted.

The contents of the ominously small thin envelope from Bromwell told him, after the depressingly clichéd softening phrases, that he'd been 'wait-listed'. Just to be sure he got the message, the writer—or the automatic form-letter generator—had followed up with an explanation of why the 'waiting list' was 'exceptionally' long this year.

Just at that moment his mother walked into the room. He gave her the two pieces of news and she supplied the formally appropriate congratulations and commiserations, respectively. She also made a feeble attempt to persuade him that he might still get into Bromwell, which she abandoned when he withered it with the contempt it deserved. (Did she not know who she was talking to?)

'Sweetheart', she went on to say, having taken a seat across from Sonny, 'I know you're disappointed, but Raft is a great university, and it's smaller than Bromwell, so you'll probably get more individual attention.'

'Says the woman who thinks Bromwell is a magic carpet ride to success', Sonny said, looking at the floor. 'Don't patronise me.'

'Don't patronise _me_, Sonny. I haven't changed my opinion of Bromwell, but I haven't changed my opinion of Raft, either. It's a wonderful school.'

Sonny stood up. 'It's just not _the_ wonderful school', he said as he left the room.

When he was up in his bedroom, the phone rang. If he had been firing on all cylinders, he would have reckoned that Tom's letter from Bromwell was likely to arrive at the same time as his own, and he would have guessed that Tom would call when it did. Maybe he had half-realised, subconsciously, but at best he had been only partly ready. Something in his voice when he greeted Tom must have given a hint. He'd have to watch out for that in future. Tom asked him what was wrong. At least he had a good answer.

'It looks like my team isn't going to make the play-offs. Oh, and I've been wait-listed at Bromwell.'

Tom explained that nobody got in from the wait-list as if it were a piece of information Sonny might not already have. Sonny asked him to stop being so diplomatic. Tom apologised for blurting and explained he'd been shocked as if _that _were a piece of information Sonny might not already have.

'I _did _get accepted to Raft', Sonny said, failing to change the subject.

'I can't believe it. I was sure you'd get in.'

Obviously Tom's head had been full of images of himself and his boyfriend at Bromwell together. Sonny tried to break in by saying, 'Did I mention that I was accepted at Raft?'

This time Tom registered, but he was still having difficulty with a positive response. Sonny was accustomed to flat responses, but this was different. He asked Tom to control his enthusiasm. Tom was saying good things about Raft, but Sonny knew that it was still Bromwell on his mind. He prompted Tom for confirmation of the reason for his call.

Tom said nothing, so Sonny filled in the blank for him, and Tom half-heartedly owned up.

'Well, surprise of surprises', Sonny said. 'A Sloane at Bromwell.'

When Tom had been sublimely confident that Sonny's 'incredible' grades and test scores would get him into Bromwell, he'd had no trouble saying that he'd get in himself by nepotism. He'd had no hesitation about working the family connection for all it was worth in his interview, and before that in his application (his parents had reviewed it to make sure he hadn't left any relatives out of the alumni section). But now, unsurprisingly, he was defensive.

'Your uncle built them a wing', Sonny said. 'The only thing that might have kept you out of Bromwell is a murder conviction, and even then, only if you'd killed the Dean of Students.'

'Hey, it's not my fault you had a shaky interview. You said yourself it wasn't as good as the one you had at Raft.'

'Maybe because the admissions office at Raft had no reason to look for ancestor anecdotes as a sign of my qualifications.'

There was an edge in Tom's voice now. 'Are you saying it _was _my fault you had a shaky interview? because I told all those stories to that Lisa Goldwin and created expectations in her mind that you didn't match?'

'You don't think that had anything to do with it.'

'_I _don't know', Tom said. 'Look, Bromwell may be full of old family friends of the Sloanes, but Lisa Goldwin isn't one of them. I didn't have any advantage of prior acquaintance and, yeah, I used some stuff I was lucky enough to know to try to make a good impression on her. Isn't that supposed to be the point of an interview? Is it wrong to use the things you know? Did you want me to set out to create a negative impression? _If _I did create an atmosphere that made things more difficult for you, and I'm only saying _if_, then that wasn't the idea, but I'm sorry things worked out that way. May I remind you of something?'

'Is it some other way you think I'm being unreasonable?'

'Actually, no. Do you remember when we first got together, I told you about how I understood how the whole thing with my family and the club and everything else, which I suppose would have included Bromwell, could make you feel uncomfortable?'

Sonny grunted in acknowledgement.

'Well, I can still see that. But it's also true what I said then, that there's nothing I can do about it. All I can do is offer to share some of the advantages with you. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that my family connections at Bromwell did help me get in. I'm sure that my parents would be happy to write a letter of recommendation for you. What do you say?'

'Yes, Virginia, there really is such a thing as _noblesse oblige_. Thanks, but I'll pass. I'd rather get in on my own merits, and besides, I think I'm gonna like Raft just fine.'

'You sure?'

'Yeah' Sonny said, 'but again, I say thanks.' He scratched behind his ear. 'And thanks for taking me to Boston to see the place.'

'Well, thanks for coming with me to see Bromwell, no matter how it worked out. I enjoyed taking the road trip, apart from anything else.'

'Yeah, me too.'

They'd barely hung up when Sonny's mother came into the room and asked to finish their conversation. Sonny reported Tom's news as evidence that Bromwell wasn't rejecting everyone.

'Oh, well', his mother said, 'some people have a certain … edge over the rest of us.'

'You don't say.' Sonny blinked and cleared his throat. 'I shouldn't have snapped at you. You were the one who told me about the advantages of a Bromwell education, but on the other hand I did just get finished telling Tom that I think I'm going to like Raft just fine.'

Sonny's mother sat down on the bed next to him. 'I know you would have preferred to get into your first-choice college, and it was my first choice for you too, but look at me', she said, putting her hand to her chest for emphasis. 'I applied to college with the height of the baby boom. Competition was so fierce I got rejected from my first _and _second choices. I wound up at Middleton, which isn't half the school Raft is.'

'I noticed you weren't as keen on it as Dad, fortunately.'

'Your father needs to maintain certain illusions about his youth in order to function. It's'—Sonny's mother forced a laugh—'cute. I made the most of the education I did get at Middleton, and so will you, at a much better school. You should be proud of getting into Raft. I know I'm proud for you. And I know you're destined for great things no matter where you go to school.'

Sonny cocked an eyebrow and said, 'All right, then. I suppose I can stop worrying about getting into college and start worrying about this disgusting elitism I've managed to develop during the process.'

His mother cocked an eyebrow back at him. 'Good. That'll keep you from worrying about what kind of weirdo you'll get for a roommate.'

Sonny let his face fall and gave the obligatory groan.

* * *

><p>Sonny had invited Jane out for pizza. Now that his own college future was settled, he wanted to ask Jane again about submitting her portfolio to BFAC. She'd made a point of telling him that she'd decided not to, but that was exactly it—she'd made a <em>point <em>of telling him. He'd checked, and although the normal submission deadline had passed, it wasn't too late to apply for mid-year entry. He hoped, because he paid for the pizza, that she'd feel too obligated to storm off in a huff when he raised the subject. Instead of plunging straight into it, he confided his own story to her. She thought it was decent of Tom to suggest that his parents might write to Bromwell on Sonny's behalf.

'I did think', Sonny said, 'that at least being gay meant avoiding sappy clichés from the kind of romance novel where the troubled young viscount decides the lowly kitchen maid is good enough for him after all. At least in that genre the troubled young viscount would never make advances to the stable boy.'

'I see you more in the role of the boots', Jane said.

'And why should the Sloanes' seal of approval matter more to Bromwell than my transcripts?'

Jane pretended to quote from the letter the Sloanes might write. 'Dear Dean Skippy, please admit Sonny. He's a fine young man, even if he isn't one of us.'

'Exactly. Besides, if they write a recommendation, it'll just make it that much worse when I do get that ultimate rejection.'

'You are very wise for a humble hall boy', Jane said, 'and generous too', she added, turning the subject to Sonny's motive for paying for the pizza, as he had hoped. According to plan, he raised the subject of her BFAC portfolio; as expected, she mentioned the submission deadline and he countered with the mid-year entry date. Then she repeated her opinion (her half-baked opinion, Sonny thought) that she and college were incompatible, before admitting that with the application requirement hanging over her head she hadn't been able to paint anything up to BFAC entry standards. Sonny remembered the joke she'd made about tears of relief the last time he'd invited her out for pizza. He hadn't really believed then that Jane would seriously be so stressed about applying to college—but it meant, he realised, that it did matter to her, no matter what else she said. She further confirmed this—and that the development of her talent also still mattered to her—by telling him that she'd started doing 'some really interesting stuff' again as soon as the pressure was off.

'So it's the old "reject them before they reject me" ', he said.

'Yeah', Jane said, 'the same thing you're doing with Bromwell.'

That didn't sound like a valid analogy to Sonny. He _had _applied to Bromwell, offering himself up for rejection and receiving it. When he pointed this out to Jane, she said that she'd done the same with State U and Lawndale State.

_That _didn't sound like a valid analogy to Sonny, either. He had really cared about Bromwell. Despite everything, it was an excellent school. Jane had no opinion of the two schools that had rejected her, or at any rate of their art departments. When he pointed this out, Jane revealed more of the truth. The lack of real interest in art at State University and Lawndale State was such that submitting a portfolio wasn't even part of the application process for their art departments.

'Wait', he said. 'You get rejected by schools that don't care if you have artistic talent, but the one that does care, you decide not to go for?'

Still on the defensive, Jane kept the invalid analogies coming by comparing her decision to avoid rejection by not applying to BFAC with his decision not to let the Sloanes write to Bromwell on his behalf. For Sonny, there was still something more important than straightening the score. If _Jane_ thought the two things were equivalents, well …

'I'll make you a deal.' Sonny gathered himself. Time to fish or cut bait. 'If I prostrate myself before the Sloanes and ask them for that letter, will you finish your portfolio and send it to BFAC?'

'God, Sonny!' Jane's eyes narrowed in totally unjustified surprise and her shoulders twitched. 'You must really think I have a shot.'

'And all I had to do to convince you was offer myself up for a round of thoroughly gratuitous humiliation.'

'Well, I guess I wouldn't be much of a friend if I deprived you of that. You drive a hard bargain, Morgendorffer, but you've got yourself a deal.'

Sonny Morgendorffer made good on his commitments. He made the call to the Sloanes as soon as he got home. Tom knew Jane, Sonny could have told him the real reason he'd changed his mind, but … he couldn't tell Tom, Tom _knew _Jane. At least Tom was pleased. The only crumb of consolation Sonny could extract from the call was the opportunity to suggest that Tom's parents could just send out 'the form letter'.

'Right', Tom wisecracked back at him, 'the _good _form letter.'

Maybe it _was_ the good form letter they sent, but whatever it was, it failed to work the charm. Bromwell did write to him again, but only to say that he definitely wasn't getting into the freshman class. His mother commiserated with him, and his father started ranting about the idiocy of Bromwell in rejecting a smart boy like Sonny.

'You know what?' Sonny said. 'I'm not even sorry.'

His mother said, 'You have nothing to be sorry about.'

His father kept ranting. 'Stuffy arrogant …'—he paused to affect a haughty, snobbish voice—'Oh, look at us, we're Bromwell!' Then he returned to a normal voice. 'So long as this doesn't drive you into a military academy! You know, we might be able to find a way to get you into Middleton after all …'

'Jake!' Sonny's mother said. 'Sonny's already been accepted into Raft! What are you talking about?' She looked at Sonny. 'Didn't you tell your father?'

Sonny looked back at her. 'I assumed you'd told him.'

His father said, 'It doesn't matter who told me! My son's going to Raft! That's gonna be great, Sonny! Raft's a damned good school! Better than any military academy!' He started to give his son the kind of friendly male-bonding shoulder-punch that Sonny loathed, checked himself, and embraced him instead. Sonny couldn't account for his own pleasure.

He expected no pleasure from delivering the news to Tom. They were sitting in a booth at the pizzeria having a slice each when the subject eventually came up, with Tom, who was exceptionally buoyant, mentioning that they hadn't checked out the pizza when they were in Newtown. That gave Sonny the opening to explain that he would be in Boston. It took Tom a moment to take in the implication, but when he did, he exhibited not just shock but also bafflement and distress. In that moment Sonny realised that, although he regretted a little having punctured Tom's mood, for himself he felt mostly relief. He _was _pleased to be going to Raft. He'd given Bromwell his best effort, all the way up to supplicating Sloane assistance, and in the end it hadn't panned out. Well, that was all right. Tom was bothered that a glowing recommendation from his parents (or so he described it; Sonny wondered idly what it had actually said, and why Tom had seen it but he hadn't) wasn't the key to every lock, but Sonny had never counted on it in the same way. He found himself able to make a wisecrack about it to Tom, about how he was 'such a loser, even a nod from the Sloanes couldn't help me'.

Tom wouldn't see the humour, becoming defensive, almost as if he imagined that Sonny might actually be thinking of himself as a loser and blaming Tom for it. So Sonny turned serious and explained that even without all the Sloane advantages, he was _not _a loser. Tom was still protesting defensively about his family advantages, and Sonny found himself turning his head away from his boyfriend to look down at the floor for a moment. When he looked up again he realised what decision he'd reached.

'Listen', he said to Tom. 'You're a smart guy and a good student.' He felt his gaze start to drift away and brought it back. 'I'm sure you deserve to get into Bromwell, and I wish you every success there.'

'Well, that's a nice thing to say, even if that Sonny Morgendorffer voice of yours makes it sound like a kiss-off … wait …'

'I think we should break up.'

Of course that, because it was the right decision, was the easy part. What he had to do next was explain it to Tom, who was still fixating on Sonny's rejection from Bromwell. Sonny dismissed that. Tom deserved the truth: they both did. It was just that the transition to college was only going to make it even more obvious that the two of them came from different places and were going to different places—not in the physical sense.

Tom's gaze shifted around for a moment. 'Sonny, when you say "physically"—you know, whether it's high school or college or whatever, I'm not looking for a girlfriend or for a boyfriend—I'm looking for the person I want to be with, and I'm not ditching anybody for being the wrong sex—I've never done that.'

Sonny took a deep breath. 'I can see how it could prey on your mind what I might be suspecting about that, but that's really not the point. Am I really the person you want to be with? Maybe you haven't recognised it yet, but we have little enough in common as it is. Now we won't see each other for months at a time, and every time we do, it'll be more difficult to pick up where we left off.'

'Not if we work at it.'

Sonny shook his head. He got the feeling that Tom, though reluctantly, was beginning to accept the truth. 'Why should we work at it when we're already getting bored?'

Tom made one final struggle to deny it, but he was silenced by Sonny's suggestion that he was just upset that Sonny had admitted the truth first. They sat for a moment in glum silence.

'You'll get over it', Sonny said, the words being what the situation called for. 'We both will.'

Jane came up to their booth, carrying her own slice of pizza.

'Hey, kids! What's new?' she said.

They both looked up from their plates to turn their heads to her. Jane could read both their faces and her own changed unmistakably.

'Oops, sorry', she said. 'Wrong table.' As she walked away to find another booth they looked back at each other silently.

* * *

><p>Sonny had gratefully been seeing less of Quinn than usual. The most recent in a string of expensive sprees on the parental credit card had broken the camel's back, and their parents—well, mainly their mother—had insisted on Quinn's getting a part-time job to repay the money. It had taken up so much of her time that she'd even had to take a sabbatical from her 'duties' with the Fashion Club. Sonny had a vague impression that the experience had not worked out badly for Quinn, but more importantly it had worked out well for him. Too bad his last summer at home couldn't be blessed by Quinn's getting a three-month contract on an offshore oil-rig.<p>

These were not the thoughts running through his mind on the evening he sat at home in front of a switched-off television after breaking up with Tom, not even when Quinn came into the room. Her mood seemed to match his, except that she wanted to talk about it. He didn't bother paying full attention to their conversation. Quinn needed only the barest of prompts from him to keep going. He gleaned that her concern was about a workmate with a drinking problem and whether Quinn should say anything to her.

'I don't really feel qualified to give any advice on interpersonal relationships today', he said.

'Why not?'

'I just broke up with my boyfriend. It's kind of a first for me', he said. 'So is this feeling in my stomach like it's been through a paper shredder.'

Quinn was surprised that Sonny had broken up with Tom—almost as surprised as Sonny himself had been—and was curious about the explanation. Sonny didn't feel like going through all that again so soon, not with Quinn or with anybody else, and just fed her some woolly clichés: 'come to the end', 'both move on'.

Quinn thought she did know about interpersonal relationships and was more than ready to offer Sonny unasked-for and unwanted advice. To her it seemed obvious that you didn't break up at this time of year because it would leave you with nobody to go out with for summer. Sonny was unimpressed by the idea of asking Tom to play the role of warm body.

'You don't tell him, Sonny', Quinn said, as if it should be as obvious to him as it was to her.

'For some reason, I continue to opt for honesty', said Sonny, 'despite mounting evidence that at the end of that road is an aging queen alone in a one-room apartment with old Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand posters peeling from all the walls.'

For some other reason, Quinn was impelled to contradict him with reassurance. She'd been to a college party and thought the people were smart and nice.

As if Sonny would accept Quinn's appraisal. 'So it's the opposite of high school?' he said. That kind of luck was a pipe dream.

'You're gonna have friends and everything. I know it sounds hard to believe.'

'Gee, thanks', Sonny said reflexively. Then he thought about what Quinn was doing. 'But', he said, forcing his voice and his face into a different register, 'um, thanks.'

'You were right to be honest. That's what I'm gonna do.'

'You mean you'll hang out with me in my one-room apartment and tell me what's wrong with the décor?'

At that moment, as Quinn smiled at him, the doorbell rang and it felt to Sonny like a good time to get up and go answer it. It was Jane.

Jane, familiar as she was with how Sonny projected to the world, had reached almost the right conclusion from seeing his facial expression at the pizzeria and again now. She thought 'that bastard' Tom had dumped him, as she'd always feared.

'No', Sonny said, 'I dumped him.'

'You dumped…'—Jane leaned forward—'_you're _the bastard?' She leaned back again. 'Whoa.'

'Yes, I'm the bastard, and the bastard is hurting like hell.'

* * *

><p>Sonny lay on his bed, on top of the covers, fully dressed, staring at the ceiling. The cordless phone receiver lying next to him rang and he picked it up and answered. The person at the other end did not utter a word, but Sonny was sure he heard the sound of a mouth opening and breath coming out of it, and he was sure it sounded like Tom. He imagined Tom lying on his own bed staring at the ceiling, but he didn't say anything. After another moment the connection was broken. Sonny sighed and switched off the phone.<p>

* * *

><p>On the last day of school Jane wanted to get straight back to a canvas she'd been working on at home, her recent spurt of inspiration continuing. Sonny walked up to his own house to see Tom's car parked outside it, with Tom next to it. Tom's face showed that he was still feeling down over the break-up. Sonny's face, naturally, showed nothing. When they'd greeted each other, Sonny made a wisecrack about not getting into Tom's car. 'That's how all this trouble started in the first place', he said.<p>

Sonny thought this should have lightened the mood, but to his surprise Tom took him seriously and he needed to be told explicitly that Sonny was just kidding.

To Sonny's further surprise, Tom had come to him looking for reassurance. He'd accepted, after much thought, what Sonny had said about their breaking up, but he still wanted to be told that Sonny had liked him once.

Sonny didn't think Tom should have needed to be told this—why on earth would Sonny, of all people, have got involved with Tom if he didn't like him?—but it was the truth, so he didn't mind telling it. Besides, he owed it to Tom.

'Tom, come on. I still like you. You're a good guy. A little spoiled, a hair smug, a trifle egotistical …'

'This isn't going quite the way I hoped', Tom admitted candidly.

'… but a smart, funny guy who's basically very caring and sensitive in the not-pukey way', Sonny continued. 'And somebody who helped me with something important in my life. I probably would have figured out about myself eventually, but I'm glad you came along to make it happen when it did and the way it did, despite what happened with Jane. Going out with you worked out to be a really good experience for me.'

Tom took half a step towards Sonny. 'Thanks for saying that.' He scuffed at the ground with one foot. 'I really look up to you, and your opinion's important to me.'

Sonny blinked twice. 'Huh? Well, I meant what I said. I wouldn't lie to you about something like that.'

'Yeah, I know.' Tom nodded. 'Do you think next year I could call you from school, and we could compare notes on our lives in a completely non-romantic fashion? You know, like friends?'

'You mean like maybe we could compare notes about good-looking males in Boston and in Newtown? Hmm, yeah.' Sonny thought quickly, and with an effort changed his voice to sound less like wisecracking. 'Yeah! That's a good idea. Call me. Or I'll call you. That'll be nice.' He was pleased to feel his face signalling his sincerity.

'Okay', Tom said. 'I'm starting to feel a little better. How about you?'

Sonny caught a glimpse from the corner of his eye of somebody peering at him from behind the curtains in his house.

'See my mother watching us? Or my father?' He tilted his head unobtrusively and firmed up his judgement. 'It's both. You've met my parents, right.' The last word omitted the question mark.

Tom knew how Sonny felt about interaction with his parents. 'That bad, huh?'

'Well, not as bad as getting beaten up. No worse than a school assembly.' Sonny waited as Tom got into his car and gave him a subdued wave as he drove off. Then he turned and walked into the house.

When he entered the living room, his parents were making an unconvincing pretence of reading newspapers, and his mother lost no time, once his overt presence licensed her, in dropping both of them (the pretence and the newspaper). She feigned a casual 'how was your day?' inquiry about his last day at school (ever!), but rapidly spilled over into a rare display of solicitousness.

Sonny said, 'I have an announcement to make.'

His mother seemed to be on the verge of breaking down as she started to promise him that things would be 'all right', but his father leapt from the sofa and cut her off.

'Helen, didn't you hear? Sonny has an announcement to make! My son's a smart young man, and I think we can trust him to think about things and make his own decisions. So long as he's not going to a military academy!'

Ignoring both his parents' contributions, Sonny continued. 'I have broken up with my boyfriend. Yes, it hurts, but it was my idea, and despite the pain I feel, I remain convinced it is for the best. I am looking forward to summer, and, to my amazement, excited about college next year. Now I shall go to my room without taking questions.'

'No questions! That's right! And no military academy! What a great announcement!' Sonny's father started to applaud. Sonny's mother turned a baffled wide-eyed stare on him. Sonny turned and headed upstairs, leaving them to it.

* * *

><p>Sonny was letting Jane drag him to the party Jodie was throwing to celebrate graduation. 'One more night with those whose stupidity has so tormented and entertained us, lo, these many years', Jane was calling it: 'A farewell to dopes!'<p>

Overriding Sonny's continued protests, she steered him into the middle of what she called 'the group dynamic you crave so much!' It still tempted Sonny to pull out a can of mace. Then Jodie conventionally welcomed them and went on to ask after Tom. Sonny limited his explanation to 'No Tom no more', prefacing it only with a wincing 'Um'. He left it to Jane to provide the detailed response to Jodie's further enquiries. Jodie switched from showing regret to showing regret combined with a little something else—was she actually impressed?

'Yes', said Sonny, 'I terminated the relationship so I could indulge my compulsive need to play the field.'

At just that moment they were interrupted by Brittany, giving Sonny an opportunity to dig himself an even deeper hole when she asked after Tom. He muttered another 'um' before saying 'covert mission'.

'Really? I didn't know he was religious.'

To complete the cycle, they were then interrupted by Kevin, who also alleged an interest in the person who featured in Kevinworld as 'that guy you know'. When Brittany took it on herself to pass on a version of Sonny's answer, Kevin was excited by the thought of an interplanetary space mission. Sonny and Jane looked sideways at each other, and Sonny thought to himself, _When we have a moment to ourselves, I must check whether this is what you brought me here for._

But when they did have a moment to themselves, what Sonny did was tell Jane about his most recent encounter with Tom. He wanted her to confirm that the idea of somebody looking up to him, though flattering, was weird. But what Jane did, to his incredulous response, was to hint that Tom might not be the only person who valued his opinion and then to say straight out that she took him seriously.

Sonny made a crack about drink-spiking, but Jane ignored it in order to tell him that at his prompting (or, as she called it, 'constant haranguing and brow-beating') she had, after all, submitted her portfolio to BFAC—and been accepted.

Sonny read a lot of fiction, so he knew what his face was doing. It was beaming. And he didn't care.

'Jane Lane! What did you say?'

Jane gestured significantly. 'You. Me. College. Same town. Be ready to have your'—she strangled the next word before she'd more than half-articulated an indeterminate vowel, and stopped gesturing—'I mean, be ready to get dragged to more parties.'

'Hey, you're allowed to be conscious of my anatomy. You're even allowed to refer to it if you want to.' _Something else they owed to Tom_, Sonny thought. _I should share that thought with him next time we speak. I don't know that I should share it with Jane, though, or not yet, anyway._

'Well, anyway, I just got the letter today. So, what do you say? Make a pledge right now to go up to Boston and get separate boyfriends?'

'Statistically speaking, the pools we're fishing in shouldn't overlap much anyway.' Sonny raised his drink in Jane's direction. 'But, to be explicit, you got yourself a deal. We've been lucky. Let's not push it.'

Jane raised her drink reciprocally. 'Thanks for talking me into applying. I owe you a huge one.'

'You don't owe me anything. Thanks for helping me get through high school.'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. The train of thought just started wasn't even derailed later when he heard the full story of the expected inevitable final break-up of the Fashion Club. He learned that Stacy had gone to the Web and found somebody who sold her an allegedly curse-removing potion. Unfortunately she'd lost track of which drink she'd put it in, and Tiffany had ended up swallowing it instead of Sandi. Her reaction to the vile taste had provoked a guilty outburst from Stacy disclosing the whole story back to her birthday party, ending with her offering to do anything to make it up to Sandi (although apparently she didn't offer amends to Tiffany, the only person, speaking factually, she had done something unpleasant to). At Jodie's party, Sandi, her voice recovered, presented Stacy with a list of demands which she felt would constitute adequate compensation, but Stacy had executed a worm's turn. Sandi had threatened her Fashion Club membership, but Stacy had decided that she'd be better off imitating Quinn's sabbatical, Quinn (despite having left her job now that her credit card debt was paid off) had spoken of extending her sabbatical, Tiffany had done her sheep impersonation, and Sandi had only scrabbled her way out of the pit by announcing her own sabbatical (saying 'your precious club no longer serves my needs as a multi-faceted young woman of today'). The four girls had wept briefly for the demise of the Fashion Club, and then agreed (at Sandi's suggestion, of course) to meet the next day at the Griffin place to discuss what they'd do with all their new 'free time'. Stacy had even volunteered to bring the magazines for them to look at …

Jane smirked when Sonny told her the story. He said, 'Two steps forward, one step back'. They were meeting, after the ceremony at the school which confirmed their emancipation, to share their first slices of pizza as actual official high school graduates. Sonny was still thinking about thanks and about things that might be owed, now not only because of their conversation on the night of Jodie's party but because of another thank-you he'd received himself, in the form of an extraordinary invitation. Jane almost dropped her pizza slice when he told her.

'DeMartino asked you to be his best man?' She managed to close her jaw, but then dropped it again. 'Wait, DeMartino's getting married? Who to?'

'Onepu. That's why he's asked me to be his best man. I mean, apart from the fact that I don't think he has any actual friends. Onepu wouldn't even have come to the school if Barch hadn't been removed, and Tony has an idea how much I had to do with that.'

'Tony?'

'I'll have to use their given names at the ceremony, so I'm starting to acclimatise myself now.'

Jane gave him a quizzical look. 'Does that mean you're actually going to do it? You're getting soft around the edges, Morgendorffer.'

'Maybe, or maybe you've got glaucoma.'

Jane chewed and swallowed a thoughtful bite of pizza. 'So does that mean you know her given name too, now? Is it as unusual as Onepu?'

'Daria. So when she was a kid there must have been people at school calling her "Diarrhoea". I hate it when I find reasons to sympathise with people. She was thrilled about having one of the students from the school as best man, and thrilled about the condition I made as well.'

'Condition?'

'Yeah, I said the only way I was gonna be best man was if you were the maid of honour.'

Jane nearly choked. 'Stop doing that to me', she said when she recovered.

'The best man will be expected to dance with the maid of honour, and there is no way I am doing that with anybody else but you. It just wouldn't be right. Especially not at that wedding.'

'Just so long as Mystik Spiral isn't playing, and we're not dancing to "Freakin' Friends". There's only so much heart-warming I can take.'

Sonny nodded. 'But while we're on that subject … and not on public display in the middle of the dance floor at a wedding … there's something I owe you.' He reached across the table and took hold of Jane's hands. 'But more importantly I owe it to myself.' He stood up, drawing Jane up with him.

Then he leaned forward across the table and kissed her.

After a minute they drew apart and sat down again.

Sonny said, 'I was right, though. It's just not there, that's all. I was right all along.'

Jane turned her head a little to the side, looking over Sonny's shoulder and out of the booth. She grinned hugely at whatever she saw.

'What?' said Sonny.

'Kevin just saw everything.'

Sonny let his head fall forward onto the table.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Some dialogue from 'Is It College Yet?' by Glenn Eichler and Peggy Nicoll<strong>_


End file.
